Preamble

The House met at halt-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

ELECTION EXPENSES

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that She will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House a Return showing the expenses of each candidate at the General Election of October 1974 in the United Kingdom, as transmitted to the returning officers pursuant to the Representation of the People Act 1949, and of the number of votes polled by each candidate, the description of each candidate, the number of polling districts and stations, the number of electors, and the number of persons entitled to vote by post.—[Dr. Summerskill.]

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Beef

Mr. Peter Mills: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by how far his policy of achieving a price of £18 cwt to beef producers is falling short of this figure in the markets of the southwest of England.

Sir J. Langfor-Holt: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he proposes to take to ensure at once to beef producers the minimum price of £18 per cwt promised by him on 17th July.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will make a statement on the condition of the livestock industry.

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will induce forthwith a scheme guaranteeing minimum market prices for beef pro-

ducers, in order to prevent a decline in breeding stock.

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on Government help to the beef producers.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Fred Peart): In view of the number of questions about the beef situation I will, with permission, answer this question and Nos. 6, 10, 11 and 14 together and give a longer reply than is usual.
The present low prices for fat cattle are the result of heavy marketings which are one-third higher than a year ago. Some of these cattle are of poor quality and are being slaughtered prematurely because of recent wet weather and anxiety about fodder supplies during the winter. Although there has been some improvement in auction prices in the last few days, the situation remains serious.
In my speech during the debate on the Gracious Speech last week I described the measures the Government have taken to safeguard the future supplies of beef. More than £150 million of support is being given to beef producers this year. The maximum support given to beef producers in any previous year was £80 million, in 1970–71. The additional £100 million recently awarded to the dairy sector will also help to ensure a continuing supply of calves for beef production.
I am conducting an urgent survey to find out how much winter fodder is available and where it is. When we have established the facts we shall consider whether any further assistance could usefully help to distribute fodder supplies to those areas where it is most needed.
I am also considering with my colleagues the problem resulting from the importation of Irish cattle. I must point out, however, that this is a traditional trade and the greater part of these cattle are imported as stores for further fattening by farmers in this country. The numbers imported for immediate slaughter are only a very small percentage of our total weekly slaughterings of cattle.
The real concern at the moment is the I described last week the changes needed need for an assured return to producers,


in the beef régime to bring this about. We all recognise the seriousness of the present situation and I shall do all I can to get urgent action to this end at the Council of Ministers' meeting on 18th November.

Mr. Mills: Will the Minister now accept that he has misled and deceived the British beef farmer, particularly in his promise of £18 per hundredweight? Will the Minister now recognise that this is particularly cruel in view of the situation that the beef farmers are experiencing, and will he now use the intervention guarantee in some form or another, or bring in an immediate beef guarantee?
May I say that it used to be "Good old Fred"; it is now "Fred, who has misled the beef producers of this country."

Mr. Peart: I cannot accept that. I am bound by the Community. The Conservative Government decided to end the guarantee. The Conservative Party is bound by the Community, and one of the Conservative Party's shadow No. 2s on agriculture knows full well that his party would not defy the Community. As I have said, I have decided to approach the Community not in February, but this month.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that yesterday I was given an answer on the right hon. Gentleman's behalf saying that the problems today were caused by excessive marketing and generally a lower than usual quality of animals? Is that seriously the argument put forward by the Minister? Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise, even at this stage, that the beef farmers' position is absolutely desperate, and the sort of words that he used, namely, that returns should improve, are wholly inadequate?

Mr. Peart: I said that one of the reasons has been the present low prices for fat cattle as a result of heavy marketing, which is one-third higher than a year ago. Conservative Members should remember that it was their Government who asked producers to transfer from dairying to beef.

Mr. Dalyell: What are some of us to tell the Scottish farmers about the export of cow beef cattle?

Mr. Peart: I know that my hon. Friend is anxious about the O'Brien Report, but there are different reasons. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Scott-Hopkins), who speaks for farming interests, has next to him the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) who takes a different view. There are people in the House who believe it should be stopped. I probably have a different view, but I must come to a decision, it is true, and the House in the end will have to debate it. We must have consultations with our suppliers. My hon. Friend knows full well about the O'Brien Report. I am probably on his side on this matter, but in the end there has to be a decision made by the House.

Mr. Farr: Is it not a fact that the right hon. Gentleman has been baffled in Brussels and hoodwinked in Luxembourg by the Europeans? Even if he had the desire, he has not the ability to help British beef producers at this moment.
Will the Minister look into the question of large multi-national meat companies which own slaughterhouses in many of the best parts of Britain and which, for weeks, have excluded homegrown beef and are slaughtering only Irish beef imports?

Mr. Peart: Yes, I shall. I give that assurance. But in reference to my excursions to Brussels and Luxembourg, may I say that I believe I got a very good package deal? It was approved by many members of the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman knows that. It gave the dairy farmers the biggest award that they have ever had.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the money being paid out under the beef premium scheme, which my right hon. Friend introduced in all good faith, is not reaching the producer whom it was originally intended to help? Will he be good enough to institute an immediate inquiry into that scheme?
Secondly, on the question of fodder, which is absolutely vital to the stores' producers in Wales and the West Country, will the Minister be good enough to say how urgently this is being examined and when be can make a statement about assistance with fodder to these farmers?

Mr. Peart: Yes, the matter is being considered now. As soon as I can make a statement I shall do so.
On the question of the premiums, I accept what my right hon. Friend said. The premium system was a good system. It was approved by the farmers' unions It could be improved, which is why I am going to Brussels very soon. I shall raise the matter then.

Mr. Stephen Ross: When he is in Brussels, will the Ministers try to correct the system whereby dairy farmers are still getting substantial grants to change over from dairy to beef? It seems to me to be an anomaly in a situation in which we have a surplus of beef. That is one way in which we could save money.

Mr. Peart: Yes, I shall do that.

Mr. Pym: Does the Minister not agree now that his unilateral act to opt out of intervention in March was an act approaching almost criminal folly, from the point of view of the beef producer? We have been let down seriously. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that he spoke in the House in June about £18 per hundredweight. We have been hoping since then that he would meet that commitment, but is it not worse than that? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, as reported in the Western Mail a week ago, one of his officers in Wales was saying that many farmers would do better by accepting as little as £4 rather than by keeping their store cattle through the winter? Does that not imply that he does not intend to act in the near future, when we have been pressing him to act immediately? Will the right hon. Gentleman please comment on that and take action before many of these farmers are ruined?

Mr. Peart: The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that even within the Community intervention has not worked. I thought the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends wanted to put a support in the market, in the sense that the guarantee system—[Interruption.] I much prefer that. But does the hon. Member say that what I have said is not true? One has only to examine the Community—

Mr. Pym: I have.

Mr. Peart: So have I. The right hon. Member knows full well that beef becomes a degraded product as soon as it is put into intervention. This is one of the difficulties. I would much prefer to have in the Market something different from intervention.

Cattle Imports (Ireland)

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many fat cattle and how many store cattle have been imported into the United Kingdom from Eire since 1st August 1974.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. E. S. Bishop): Imports of Irish Republic cattle into the United Kingdom during the months of August to September were as follows:

Fats
2,288 head


Stores
79,050 head

No later official figures are available, but unofficial estimates indicate that sendings during October showed some decline.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does the Minister of State agree that this situation cannot be allowed to continue? It is making our beef farmers' situation infinitely worse. Does he not agree that something must be done immediately by his right hon. Friend to stop the importation of fat cattle into this country and the paying out of the slaughter premium to them? There should be a 60-day waiting period. Does he not also agree that he should immediately start negotiations with the Irish Minister to cut down the amount of imports of stores which are using up the fodder which is in short supply? It must be done now, not next week.

Mr. Bishop: We recognise the concern. The main point about the import of Irish cattle is that this it not expressly directed at the Irish situation; it is a matter of national concern. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was his Government who got rid of the domiciliary period in scrapping the fatstock guarantee scheme, which not only got rid of the assurances the farmers now seek, but took away the domiciliary period which they are now asking to be returned. I remind the hon. Gentleman also of the assurances given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales on 31st October when he said that


he would see that the matter was looked into. This is being done as urgently as possible.

Mr. Fitt: I claim absolutely no knowledge of agriculture, but is not it a fact that the cattle from Ireland, both from North and South—I am glad to see there is no discrimination—have already been bought by Welsh, Scots and English farmers, and this is discrimination not against Irish cattle but against people living in this part of the United Kingdom?

Mr. Bishop: I wish the hon. Gentleman's candour about his knowledge of the industry was matched by similar candour on the part of some members of the Opposition. The point to be made is that the import of cattle from the Republic is carried out under the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, and the number coming in is a small percentage of what could come in if the agreement were observed. The other factor is that imports are in line with traditional levels but higher than last year's very low figures. They represent about 5 per cent. of the current United Kingdom slaughterings.
With regard to trying to restrict this cattle trade, I have pointed out the obligations we have under the agreement which we are honouring. Further to that, were we to take steps recommended by some Conservative Members we should be in breach of the treaty obligations which were negotiated, and accepted by them, and such unilateral action would be unjustified.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Common Market rules for Italy are the same as they are for Britain, and that what the Italians can do under treaty we can do? We ask him to do the same for Britain as the Italians have done for Italy. If that involves denouncing the Anglo-Irish treaty, let it be done.

Mr. Bishop: It is rather much for the hon. Gentleman to side with those discussing the taking of unilateral action when he rightly deplores some of the unilateral action which has taken place this week in the Welsh ports. The fact remains that because we are in the Common Market we can only renegotiate the changes which he seeks, and with the consent of our partners.

Mr. Duffy: The Minister is right to remind the House that the average weekly shipment from the Irish Republic is only half the Irish entitlement under the agreement and is only 5 per cent. of the average British weekly slaughter total, but is he aware that, small though the Irish shipments are, they help to sustain a demand in Southern Ireland for British goods that makes that market Britain's fourth largest export market?

Mr. Bishop: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. The number of cattle that could be imported from Ireland under the agreement is more than 600,000 and the number actually imported is a small proportion of that. I also remind the House that this shows that the problems we face with our beef are not confined to us alone, because in wanting to export the cattle in this way the Irish are doing something to benefit their market. Overall, this shows the failure of intervention not only in Ireland but elsewhere.

Mr. Jopling: Although it is clear that the Irish import situation has contributed to the collapse of the beef market, will the Minister of State now answer the question that his right hon. Friend failed to answer? Was it with the authority of his right hon. Friend that his divisional officer in Cardiff, Mr. Jameson, told farmers that they would have seriously to consider whether they sold stores at £4 a hundredweight now? We have not had an answer. We must know whether that statement was made with the authority of the Minister.

Mr. Bishop: I think the point is that Government policy is usually expressed by the Ministers, but, on the point made by the hon. Gentleman, we shall look into the situation.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I shall seek leave to raise the matter at the earliest moment on the Adjournment.

Mr. Hal Miller: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he intends to take any steps to limit the imports of live Irish cattle.

Mr. Bishop: We are considering the representations that were made on this subject during the debate on 31st October.

Mr. Miller: Will the Minister please understand that although farmers accept that there is a traditional trade in the import of Irish cattle they cannot understand and cannot accept the exchange of party politics across the Floor of the House? They wish for some action now. If action cannot be taken under the terms of our obligations to limit the imports, will the Minister consider some action to withdraw from such imports the subsidies that are threatening the price structure? Will he please understand that even 5 per cent. of imports at a lower price can have a grave effect on the market?

Mr. Bishop: Regarding the eligibility for the beef premium, the hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that when the beef premium scheme was introduced it was agreed that the beef premium would be paid on all eligible cattle imported from the Republic. In the debate to which I referred a few Questions ago, my right hon. Friend the Minister undertook to look at the matter urgently.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Does the Minister not agree that it is his duty to look after the interests of the beef producers of the United Kingdom and not be so anxious to look after the beef producers of the Republic of Ireland? Does he not agree with me that, further to the statement made by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt), the beef producers of the United Kingdom are being discriminated against, in that producers from the Republic are receiving more money for their cattle than those who produce them in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Bishop: I am not aware of the discrimination to which the hon. Member refers, but I am aware that this Government have done an enormous amount to help beef producers. The total amount given to beef producers since March of this year is £150 million. I need hardly refer to the predictions made by my right hon. Friend earlier in this period.

Mr. Ridley: If, because of alleged cruelty, it is decided to ban the export of live cattle from this country, why is it not decided to ban the import of live cattle into this country for the same reason?

Mr. Bishop: rose—

Hon. Members: Answer!

Mr. Bishop: That is precisely why I am at the Box. My right hon. Friend has given assurances about the O'Brien Report regarding the export of cattle, which I recognise has some significance in the present system of the beef market. At the same time, with regard to the possibility of banning imports, it could be a contravention of the treaty to which hon. Members committed us.

Mr. William Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that the British housewife would very much welcome the chance to eat Catholic beef and Catholic cattle rather than listen to the nonsense from Protestant bulls?

Mr. Bishop: I am aware that the British housewife has catholic tastes. I am pleased to hear the reference to the housewife and the consumer, as well as the problems of the producer.

Mr. Emery: Do the Minister of State and the Secretary of State realise that what worries so many farmers and many Members of the House is the apparent lack of sympathy and understanding of the beef problem by the Ministers and the officials? This has been apparent in the answers that we have received today. In order to overcome the major objection to the importation of Irish fat cattle when the British producer is on such a low return, will the Minister consider negotiating with the Irish Government for some limitation of this importation at the moment?

Mr. Bishop: I think the hon. Member will recognise that the problem goes more deeply than that. There are, of course, the problems of the fodder situation, which is being looked at. There are also the problems of the domiciliary period, which, as I have said, we are examining urgently—and the problems of the O'Brien Report are also receiving urgent attention.
As my right hon. Friend said earlier, we are looking for a new beef régime which is being negotiated urgently. Therefore, not only do people get sympathy; they also get action from this Government.

Mr. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it be in order for you to encourage the Minister of State to


follow the practice of his right hon. Friends in grouping identical questions?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.

Sugar

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the recently negotiated sugar agreements.

Mr. Molloy: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in what way the EEC sugar agreement will affect the British consumer; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Blaker: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement about his recent negotiations in the EEC regarding sugar.

Mr. Peart: On the special measures to ensure supplies of sugar to meet the Community's deficit, I would refer to the reply given to the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) on 1st November. The cost of this sugar when refined will be far below a world market price but I cannot at this stage make a firm forecast.
On the future sugar régime of the Community, we have secured a maximum quota of just over 1·5 million metric tons at the full guaranteed price.

Mr. Hamilton: Notwithstanding those agreements and the outcome of the talks with the Council of Ministers in the next week or two, will my right hon, Friend give an assurance that he will seek a long-term agreement for the import of cane sugar from the Commonwealth no matter what happens in the Council of Ministers? On the question of beet sugar, will he urge on the British Sugar Corporation the need to get on with modernising its processing equipment to cater for an increased beet supply in this country, particularly in Fife, and possibly the reopening of the sugar beet factory at Cupar? If there is likely to be a shortage of sugar next year, as there may well be, will my right hon. Friend not hesitate to introduce rationing, as that would clearly be a fairer system of ensuring that poorer sections of the community got a fair share of what was going?

Mr. Peart: As my hon. Friend knows I did secure an increase in the acreage

quota for beet sugar, but I am anxious to look at the position of Scotland on this issue. I am well aware of the matter that he mentioned. On the question of Commonwealth sugar, it is true that this is still a matter for the Community, and the whole question of the Protocol 22 countries, affecting the Caribbean, Swaziland and India, will be discussed very soon in the Community. We are aware of the concern and we are anxious to have a long-term agreement.

Mr. Blaker: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the view which appears to be that of the cane sugar refinery workers, that as a result of his negotiations their jobs are at risk?

Mr. Peart: No, I do not accept that. I think that too much alarm and despondency has been spread by certain people, for whatever reasons. I believe that the cane refiners' position will be safeguarded by the agreements reached in the Council of Ministers. I am meeting the workers concerned continually and have kept them informed throughout the negotiations.

Mr. Molloy: Does my right hon. Friend accept that this is another bitter EEC pill for the British public to swallow, without any sugar to coat it? Ought he not now to try to renegotiate the Australian deal? Is my right hon. Friend prepared to meet all those involved in the refining, distributing and selling of sugar to try to sort out the mess we are in?

Mr. Peart: May I say that I took the initiative to have talks with Australia, as I have mentioned in the House. I also raised the matter in the Community. I hope my hon. Friend will appreciate that Australia would accept a deal only if it were approved by the Community. That is the position. In the circumstances, because of our immediate needs, I believe that what I did, namely, to accept negotiations endorsed by the Community and the scheme that has been announced for one year, is right in the circumstances.

Mr. Shersby: Does the Minister agree that it is in the national interest for the maximum quantity of beet sugar to be grown in Britain, and for the maximum quantity of cane sugar to be imported into Britain, as distinct from the Community, if our sugar supplies are to be assured? Will he therefore press without


further delay for the Community to agree to the importation of not less than 1·4 million tons of Commonwealth cane sugar to match the 1·5 million tons of beet sugar which it is hoped to grow in this country if we are to fulfil both our A and B quotas?

Mr. Peart: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The answer to his supplementary question is that this matter will be discussed in the Community very soon. Our position is that we want the 1·4 million tons of sugar at a fair price to the producer. We believe that that would be the consumers' interest too. I have announced the increase in sugar beet, and I think that has been welcomed.

Mr. Jay: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, according to my information, the Australians were willing to offer about 300,000 tons a year for a minimum of five years, that the price for raw Australian sugar would have been about £140 a ton, compared with the EEC price of £134 a ton, and that, allowing for the subsidy involved, there would have been no great difference in the price? In those circumstances, was he right to turn down this offer?

Mr. Pearl: I think my right hon. Friend has been wrongly informed. Australia was asking us to pay a higher price than we shall pay for Community sugar. There is no question about that. The price was £180 a ton, compared with £156 a ton.

Mr. Pym: As the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement runs out at the end of next month, is it not extraordinary that the Minister should be talking about negotiating it with the Community very soon? I think those were his words. Will he assure the House that everything has been arranged, that supplies are settled, assured and fixed, and that contracts have been signed? Is that the situation?

Mr. Peart: The right hon. Gentleman must know that this has to be endorsed by the Community. I did not ask for this. This is the nature of the Community, and the right hon. Gentleman knows that full well. I am anxious that we should have the old Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, and also that we should receive the 1·4 million tons, as the right hon. Gentleman knows.

Mr. Michael Marshall: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will give immediate consideration to the introduction of sugar rationing: and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Tim Renton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will now consider the introduction of sugar rationing.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang): I would refer hon. Members to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Corbett) on 5th November.

Mr. Marshall: Is the Minister aware that both that answer and the answer given earlier this afternoon are totally unsatisfactory? Is he further aware that it is time we looked at the practical problems? We know about the long-term difficulties over agreement, but is the hon. Gentleman aware of the difficulties which people working shifts, disabled people and pensioners are experiencing in trying to get to shops early enough to get limited supplies of sugar? Finally, will he confirm that he will take this matter seriously? It has been said that it will be difficult and expensive to introduce rationing. It was not difficult with petrol. Will the hon. Gentleman at least take the necessary powers so that he can move with speed to introduce rationing if necessary?

Mr. Strang: I recognise the difficulties to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but he will have to accept that rationing does not provide a simple solution. I assure him that we are looking at the short-term problems with great care.

Mr. Molloy: Will my hon. Friend ask his right hon. Friend to consider that part of my previous suplementary question which asks whether he will meet the representatives of all those involved in the refining, distributing and selling of sugar to try to resolve the mystery about there being tons and tons of sugar somewhere? Everyone has sugar except the British housewife.

Mr. Strang: Let me take the first point first. We recognise the position of the refinery workers, and I suspect that no


group of workers has had more frequent and direct access to a Minister than they have had to my right hon. Friend. Only this morning, two of my ministerial colleagues and I met refinery workers from Greenock.
On the hon. Gentleman's second point, there is the apparent paradox that supplies that have moved into distribution and supplies of retail packets of sugar over the past few months have been higher than in the previous year. If I were asked to make a comment, I should tell the hon. Gentleman that there are 18 million households in this country and that if only 10 per cent. of them hold a few extra pounds of sugar over a few months it can have quite an impact on the retail position.

Mr. Renton: On the question of the immediate sugar shortage, will the hon. Gentleman stop his hon. Friend the Minister of State for Prices and Consumer Protection from dealing with the problem as he did in a Written Answer on 4th November by saying:
The public can also help by not hoarding sugar".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th November 1974, Vol. 880, c. 39.]
That has the same quality of monumental truth as saying that there would not be a water shortage if it were to rain
Will the hon. Gentleman personally and immediately read a letter that I shall send him this afternoon from a constituent who points out that she has been without any sugar for five—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think we need have the content of the letter today.

Mr. Strang: The fact is that more sugar has moved into distribution in recent months than in the previous year. Of course there are short-term supply difficulties, and of course they have been exacerbated by recent industrial action at Silvertown, and of course my right hon. Friend is looking into this matter very closely indeed.

Mr. Kershaw: Will the Minister of State realise that, for the first time since the repeal of the Corn Laws, it is possible for the British farmer to produce food more cheaply than it can be imported? Is it not a remarkable achievement by this Government to have produced at the same time extreme shortages, very high

prices, very high subsidies, and ruination for farmers? Does that not demand a very high degree of incompetence, even from a Government such as this?

Mr. Strang: We have serious difficulties at present in both these areas, but they did not arise in March this year. The beef and sugar situations owe a great deal to the failure of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. The right time to make proper arrangements for beef and sugar was when we were entering the Common Market.

Mr. Pym: Does the Minister accept that his complacency is in stark contrast to the experience of the housewife? Does he also accept that the vagueness of the answer given by his right hon. Friend about future supplies could well lead to rationing, and that that would be the Government's responsibility?

Mr. Strang: We utterly reject any suggestion of complacency. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the Government are doing everything they can and are considering every possible measure to improve the situation.

Mr. Marshall: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Food Supplies

Mr. Tebbit: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list the powers he possesses to introduce rationing of basic foodstuffs such as sugar.

Mr. Strang: My right hon. Friend has no such powers.

Mr. Tebbit: Would the Government consider taking such powers or, alternatively, altering their policies, as these powers may be needed unless the policies are altered? I assure the hon. Gentleman that I say this in no unpleasant terms. I have a good deal of sympathy for the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State who has had the beef rug pulled out from underneath him and who has seen the Commonwealth producers rat on their obligations to supply us at reasonable prices. May I ask him again, if he does not intend to change policies on this matter, whether he will consider


taking steps to make sure that the British housewife can get sugar somewhere, because she cannot today?

Mr. Strang: The hon. Member has ranged widely. I agree with the first part of his supplementary question, but would add that rationing is a very serious matter. It would be a drastic and expensive step to take, and one which would be appropriate only in a situation in which we had a serious and prolonged shortage. That situation does not exist for any commodity at present.

Mr. Woodall: Is my hon. Friend aware that unofficial rationing of sugar is now taking place in my constituency? I have evidence which I can produce to my hon. Friend of grocery concerns which are permitting only customers who purchase a specific amount of groceries to buy sugar? If he has no powers to introduce rationing, has he powers to stop this unofficial rationing?

Mr. Strang: I can understand my hon. Friend's concern about the situation which exists in some shops in his constituency. Some housewives are, of course, having difficulty in obtaining sugar at present, but we must recognise that the amount of sugar going into distribution, and which has gone into distribution over the last few months, is up on last year. What we have at this time is an abnormal demand.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many of my constituents—he knows this because I have written to his right hon. Friend about them—are demanding sugar rationing as the only fair way of dealing with this subject? Does he and his right hon. Friend accept that it is not only sugar that will need to be rationed shortly? It will soon be beef.
Does he also accept that, although the Minister of State said that the present price showed the failure of intervention—since intervention brought prices in Belgium to £22, in France to £23, in the Netherlands to £19 and in West Germany to £21, while we are getting £12 without it—farmers in this country would be delighted to accept the "failure" of intervention if it were to be introduced?

Mr. Strange: The question relates to sugar. I assure the hon. Lady that my

right hon. Friend is doing everything within his power to secure adequate supplies for this country.

Fishing Vessels (Operating Subsidies)

Mr. Wall: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the possible reintroduction of operating subsidies for British fishing vessels.

Mr. Bishop: I have received an application from the British Trawlers' Federation for the reintroduction of some form of operating subsidy. This poses a number of difficult questions which need to be examined in depth. I cannot anticipate the outcome.

Mr. Wall: Will the Minister bear it in mind that many of the long-term fuel bunkering contracts end in December, when the industry will be faced with the full effect of the increase in fuel prices? This will lead to ships being either sold or laid up this winter, which will mean a shortage of fish next spring, when we will also be short of meat and poultry. If the Minister does not wish to be the first Minister to introduce food rationing in peacetime, he has to do something about it now.

Mr. Bishop: I recognise the problems to which the hon. Member has referred. We are looking at the matter with a sense of urgency. He will know that, after a couple of years of profitability, there are special problems this year, including fuel costs, and we shall bear that in mind.

Mr. James Johnson: I do not deny that confidential figures submitted by the vessel owners to the Ministry may justify some form of subsidy under the old set-up, but is the Minister aware that the public in Hull and Humberside, working on the dock, and businessmen in the city, feel there is far too much secrecy about subsidies? Is he also aware that Mr. Charles Meek, Chairman of the White Fish Authority, whom no one can doubt on the subject, has been to Hull within the last few days? He says that although there may be need for some injection of money, he is not the man to say, as the owners are saying, that there will be a multi-million pound deficit next year. He says the opposite— that there will be an upturn in the industry next year.

Mr. Bishop: I recognise my hon. Friend's concern for the industry. We are prepared to receive representations not only from the British Trawlers' Federation but from any other source, including those he has in mind.

Mr. Beith: Will the Minister confirm that he has also received representations from the inshore fishing industry? Does he realise that more inshore fishermen are facing escalating fuel and gear costs on a scale which, without the capital backing of the trawler industry, they will find it very difficult to meet? Is he considering this matter with equal urgency?

Mr. Bishop: Representations have been made by other authorities, but we have to take care that we consider those aspects which are national and those that are sectional. I recognise the sectional aspects to which the hon. Member has referred. If he wishes to suggest representations to us we shall consider them urgently.

Mr. Prior: When will the Minister act? The Department has had knowledge of figures from the port of Lowestoft and from one or two other ports since last June and it has done nothing. Are we to wait for months and months on both agriculture and fishing—until we have rationing by price and by quantity—before the Department takes the matter seriously? Is it a fact that the Minister of Agriculture no longer has any power within the Government, that power has been taken over entirely by the Ministry of Food, which no longer has any interest in agriculture? When will he do the only honourable thing in the circumstances, which is to resign?

Mr. Bishop: I surely do not have to remind hon. Gentlemen that my right hon. Friend and this Government have been in power only since March of this year—[Hon. Members: "Too long."] Hon. Members may say, "Too long," but we have been given a resurgence of power in the last few weeks. We are pursuing the matter urgently; there are real problems which have to be considered.

Potatoes

Mr. Jessel: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current price of new potatoes.

Mr. Strang: At this time of year there are virtually no new potatoes on the market. Average retail prices of potatoes from the 1974 maincrop are 2½p to 3½p per pound.

Mr. Jessel: New potatoes will not be the only thing that are not on the market. Pending next season's new supply, will the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that during the coming winter there will be an adequate supply of potatoes at reasonable prices?

Mr. Strang: I think the hon. Member will be aware that there is a sensible quota system in this country for the production of potatoes. Inevitably the yields fluctuate from year to year. We are in the middle of the potato harvest, but as things stand we are confident that we should have adequate home-produced supplies from our present main crop.

CBI AND TUC

Mr. Skinner: asked the Prime Minister whether he has any plans to meet the TUC and CBI.

Mr. Duffy: asked the Prime Minister when he expects to have talks with the TUC and the CBI on the maintenance of employment in industry.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): I would refer my hon. Friends to the reply which I gave on 5th November to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton).

Mr. Skinner: Now that we are mopping up some of the mess left by the last but one administration, does my right hon. Friend not agree that before he next meets the CBI he should compile a dossier of all those defaulting companies which failed to send in their returns in accordance with the counter-inflation policy of the Tory administration? Will he ask the CBI what he should do to take account of this position? Will he then—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I called the hon. Member for a supplementary question. He has already asked two.

Mr. Skinner: I have not quite finished.

Mr. Speaker: That is for me to judge. For once, I shall allow one more very brief question.

Mr. Skinner: When my right hon. Friend meets the members of the TUC will he tell them that although we failed to get the £10 million refund that was taken from the charitable sources of the trade unions, it will be restored now that we have a clear majority in the House?

The Prime Minister: In reply to my hon. Friend's question about what he considers to be defaults in relation to the Counter-Inflation Act—I presume that he is referring to the parts of the Act dealing with the Price Code—it must be a matter for the Price Commission to report upon, and for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to look into these matters.
With regard to the second question, which relates to a Finance Bill matter, I cannot anticipate my right hon. Friend's Budget Statement. [Interruption.] In case my answer was not clear, I was referring to my hon. Friend's concluding question about the TUC's £10 million. As it is obviously a Finance Bill matter, I cannot anticipate the Budget Statement of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Duffy: Despite last month's impressive drop in unemployment figures, is the Prime Minister aware that the recent approach by the TUC to his Government about job protection reflects the growing concern not merely in this country but throughout Europe, and does he not therefore think that, however severe the limitations upon him on Tuesday, the prime aim of the Chancellor must be to keep unemployment to a sustainable minimum?

The Prime Minister: Again, without anticipating my right hon. Friend's Budget Statement, I remind my hon. Friend that in the statement on his July measures my right hon. Friend said that he would be introducing a Budget in November, and the avoidance of a lurch into unemployment would be a very high priority in his objectives.
With regard to the earlier part of my hon. Friend's question about unemployment, he is quite right in saying that the problem which we face in this country, despite recent improvements in the unemployment situation over a short period, is a world problem and it is a matter for world statesmanship to ensure that we

do not lurch into a recession as a result of the world oil situation.

Mr. Heath: The Prime Minister's hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) asked for an undertaking about the repayment of £10 million to the trade unions, to which the Prime Minister replied that this was a budgetary matter. It is surely only a budgetary matter if action is to be taken. Surely the Prime Minister can give the House and his hon. Friend a firm assurance that no action will be taken by the Government to attempt to refund the £10 million?

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment has already made clear—and I should have remembered the fact—that in view of the decision taken by Parliament in the previous short Parliament—the minority Parliament—the Government do intend to act in this Session on this matter. But I must leave any questions on this subject to my right hon Friend the Chancellor.

Mr. Nigel Lawson: In the light of the Prime Minister's remarks a moment ago about unemployment, will he inform the House whether or not it is a part of the social contract to hand over to the trade unions de facto control of the monetary printing press?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I am extremely surprised to hear any Conservative after the Conservative's record in prodigal printing—most of which was used for wrong purposes, which is why we are in the present mess—ask a question about printing presses.

POPULATION

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Prime Minister if he will now appoint a Minister for population matters.

The Prime Minister: My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal has discharged this responsibility since last March and he is now assisted by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office. I see no reason to change this arrangement.

Mrs. Short: Does my right hon. Friend not accept that there are many facets of this urgent problem that are not now


being dealt with by the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen he has mentioned? Is he aware that there is an urgent need to train doctors and nurses to carry out these procedures? Is he further aware that there is an urgent need to educate both adults and young people into a responsible attitude to the creation of new life? Is he also aware that the work of the Family Planning Association, built up over many years, is now disappearing because of the reorganisation of the Health Service carried out by the previous Conservative Government, which makes it impossible for area health authorities to pay the FPA to act as agents on their behalf, and when they send patients to the general practitioners they are refused advice on family planning matters. Will—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has had four so far.

The Prime Minister: In reply to the question about the responsibility of the health service, it is a fact that in this, and in other matters the changes made by the previous Government have caused a considerable degree of chaos, which is taking time to clear up. There is no doubt about that.
On the main question of the four, my hon. Friend will be aware that, of course, the reason why we need the Lord Privy Seal is that the work in this area falls upon a number of Ministers in a number of Departments. That is why successive Governments have decided not to try to have one separate Minister with responsibility.
This morning my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, as my hon. Friend will know, made a very important speech on this subject dealing with some of the issues which she has raised, including an announcement on improved assistance in some of these matters. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will be studying my right hon. Friend's speech. If she has not got a copy of it I am sure that my right hon. Friend will gladly send her one and place a copy in the Library.

Sir D. Renton: Is the Prime Minister aware that the good work done by the Lord Privy Seal within the limited range of his responsibilities has been appreciated, but is he further aware that we

appear to have in the country more people than we shall be able to feed? Will he therefore ensure that we have in the House a Minister with overall responsibility for dealing with questions of family planning, immigration and emigration?

The Prime Minister: Everyone knows that the right hon. and learned Member has, over the years, pioneered a lot of the thinking on this matter and has been responsible for changes made by successive Governments.
I do not think it would be right to have a single Minister responsible for all these matters. Immigration is clearly a Home Office matter, so I do not think it would be possible to do this. In fact, the consideration that leads us to keep these matters in separate Departments is probably the main reason for my having to answer questions on it today.
I should like to thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the tribute he paid to the Lord Privy Seal. I am sure that, within it, he intended to pay a tribute to the very good work done by my noble Friend in the world conference held during the summer.

Sir D. Renton: Yes.

Dr. Phipps: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, had the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) had his way many years ago, the great majority of Members on the Government benches would not be here today? Does he wonder whether that is the purpose of his policy?

The Prime Minister: I think that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) was very fully answered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services a few days ago in Liverpool. I certainly do not intend to comment on any of the speeches of that kind from the right hon. Gentleman or any of his right hon. Friends. As the House knows, in my capacity as joint president of the "National Amalgamated Trade Union of Party Leaders"—all of whom may God preserve, Mr. Speaker—I am very anxious not to intervene in any of these matters.

Mr. Prior: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, important though population matters are, it is even more important that we should be able to sustain the population that we have, or are likely to have,


and unless we have a radical change in our agriculture and fishing policies over the next few weeks we shall not be in a position to support our population?

The Prime Minister: I fully agree with the right hon. Gentleman in expressing concern on these matters, which I think inspired a great number of the questions before I came in a few minutes ago. The right hon. Gentleman speaks very differently now from the way in which he spoke in those famous broadcasts, "Weekend with Prior", at one o'clock every Sunday. He will know how much of the chaos we inherited, both here and in the shambles in the CAP, are due to right hon. Members opposite.

INFLATION

Mr. Rost: asked the Prime Minister which of Her Majesty's Ministers is responsible for policies to curb inflation.

The Prime Minister: All members of the Government are responsible for carrying out our policies to curb inflation.

Mr. Rost: Will the Prime Minister tell us which of his Ministers he believes is making the most progress? Is it the Secretary of State for Industry, with his massive, expensive and irrelevant programme for nationalisation? Is it the Secretary of State for Employment, with his mythical social contract? Or is it the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose efforts are turning stagflation into slumpflation?

The Prime Minister: I thought that was very good, and made up for the great frustration the hon. Gentleman showed when he was not called yesterday.
I do not keep a league table in these matters. I recall that last April the important thing was not the performance of any individual but the fact that Liverpool won the Cup.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Has the Prime Minister's attention been drawn to the fact that the City financiers, the bankers, all the Press and their other supporters, particularly on the Opposition side, have long been complaining of the allegedly high increases given to the low-paid workers of this country? Will he consider the fact that the City of London, with the smallest geographical area and the lowest number of residents, is paying

its chief executive officers £2,000 to £3,000 a year extra—no one can ascertain the exact amount? Which Minister would look into this grossly inflationary payment?

The Prime Minister: Now that my hon. Friend has brought this matter to my attention I shall certainly look into it. I find it rather more revealing, particularly after some of the statistical quibbles that we have had from right hon. Gentleman opposite in recent weeks, to see that the report of the Price Commission, which they set up and which operates under rules that they laid down, points out that whereas in the last three months of the Conservative Government their index, based on prenotification of price increases, showed an annual rate of interest of 23 per cent., in the three months to August that rate has been cut to 9½ per cent.

Mr. Marten: In order to cut down the element of inflation which is attributable to sugar, will the Prime Minister dispatch the Secretary of State for Trade to Australia—he did very well when he went there recently—and get him to do a deal with the Australians for 300,000 tons of sugar, which will also help employment in the sugar refining industry in this country?

The Prime Minister: I agree that my right hon. Friend did extremely well on his trade mission to both Australia and New Zealand recently. I understand that some questions on sugar have been answered this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman, none better, will know how much of the problems—not all of it, with the present world shortage—arises from the totally inadequate and humiliating terms of the Lancaster House conference and the aura à Coeur and the total failure to put it in the protocol. I am sure that he will understand that. [Interruption.] I agree that it was not an agreement. It was claimed to be. I am talking about the sugar situation resulting from the 1971 terms, which were a disgrace to this country and have caused the utmost problems for the Commonwealth which is now seeking other solutions. On the detailed question and the hon. Gentleman's concern, we have every intention of getting all the sugar that we can from Australia, either through Community arrangements or direct.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Emery: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did not 'intervene during Prime Minister's Questions to raise this point of order, and I am sorry for not having given you notice of it. Would you consider at the start of a new Parliament making it clear to hon. Members that, particularly during Prime Minister's Questions but at Question Time generally, those few who attempt to pose five or six questions by making short speeches will find it difficult to catch your eye in future? This might assist in getting through more Questions during Question Time.

Mr. Speaker: That is certainly a valuable suggestion. I think that it would also be helpful if their colleagues would tell such hon. Members what they think of them.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Heath: May I ask the Leader of the House to give the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:

MONDAY, 11TH NOVEMBER—Motion on the Channel Tunnel Bill.

Debate on EEC documents on sugar (Nos. R/1900/73 and R/1957/74).

TUESDAY, 12TH NOVEMBER—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget Statement.

WEDNESDAY, 13TH NOVEMBER and THURSDAY 14TH NOVEMBER—Completion of the debate on the Budget Statement.

FRIDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER—Remaining stages of the National Theatre Bill.

Second Reading of the Education Bill.

MONDAY, 18TH NOVEMBER—There is a change from what I announced last week.

Second Reading of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill.

Motion on Norton Villiers Triumph Limited.

Mr. Heath: Will the Leader of the House take note of the fact that the

whole House will be grateful to him for taking cognisance of the recommendations that we made to the Government that, instead of a two-day debate on the Budget, there should be a three-day debate? I believe that this is both desirable and necessary. We appreciate the arrangement that has been made.
Concerning the business for Monday, I am sure that the House will want a considerable time to debate the EEC documents on sugar, because I presume that it will be a wide-ranging debate. Whether we can have a proper discussion on the EEC documents on sugar depends on how much time is taken on the motion on the Channel Tunnel Bill.
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether, on the business for Monday 18th November, which he has just announced—namely, Second Reading of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill—the Government intend to try to insert into the Bill in the form of amendments the substantial statement made by the Secretary of State for the Environment yesterday regarding penalties on councillors and the arrangements for the reclamation of the money through either rents or rates?
Finally, will the right hon. Gentleman note, that in view of the Government's complacency, particularly that of the Minister of Agriculture, about the agricultural situation in this country and the unsatisfactory replies that we got in the debate on the Address, we shall want a debate on agriculture at the earliest possible moment after the Minister of Agriculture returns from his discussions in Brussels, which I understand will he on Monday and Tuesday of the following week?

Mr. Short: I am grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman said about the Budget debate.
The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct about the importance of the consultative documents on sugar. They set out the Commission's proposals on the Community's sugar policy, both internal and external, to the Council of Ministers. I hope that the motion on the Channel Tunnel Bill will be got through at an early stage. Of course, the rule will be suspended for an hour and a half. I hope that there will be time for a good


debate on the two motions, because I agree that they are extremely important.
I can give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks on his third point. The legislation dealing with the Clay Cross situation, which my right hon. Friend announced yesterday, will not appear in the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill. There will be separate legislation.
Finally, I note what the right hon. Gentleman said about agriculture.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Will my right hon. Friend arrange for the Secretary of State for Industry to come to the House at an early date and give us an account of what the Government are doing to try to save the HS 146, and, with it, the British civil aircraft industry, from the wrecking tactics of the spiteful and irresponsible Sir Arnold Hall?

Mr. Short: I understand my hon. Friend's feelings on this matter. I will certainly pass on what he said to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. David Steel: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will ask the Secretary of State for Scotland to make a statement next week on the position in the Scottish teachers' strike? Is he aware that many hon. Members on both sides of the House, together with the employing local authorities, regard their revised demand for a flat-rate increase before Christmas as reasonable and that we believe that a statement ought to be made to the House?

Mr. Short: I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend heard what was said by the hon. Gentleman. This situation is causing great concern, and I am certain that my right hon. Friend will consider what has been said.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will my right hon. Friend now tell us when we are to have the debate on the Sandford Report on National Parks and on the report on the release of defence lands which was earlier promised for a date in October?

Mr. Short: I am aware of that, but we were all busily occupied elsewhere in October. I still bear in mind my hon. Friend's useful suggestion that we should combine the two reports, Nugent and Sandford, in one debate. I will certainly arrange it as early as possible.

Mr. Gow: In view of the discussions which are taking place between the British and South African Governments about the future of the Simonstown Agreement, may I ask the Leader of the House whether he will find time for a debate on that agreement before those discussions are concluded?

Mr. Short: There will be a one-day debate on defence before Christmas. That will give hon. Members an opportunity to debate the matter.

Mr. John Mendelson: Regarding the proposed sugar agreement, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend recalls being in the Chamber on Tuesday when demands were made for a debate on the alternative proposals of a five-year sugar agreement with Australia or the proposals made by the Common Market authorities? Does he agree that there ought to be a debate in the House before the Minister of Agriculture finally commits us to either of those proposals?
Does my right hon. Friend recall that in an earlier Parliament, when we were in Opposition, we, as a united Opposition, pressed for a debate on the size of lorries to be admitted to this country before the then Minister was in a position to commit us at the Common Market Ministers' meeting? Ought we not to proceed in the same way as we then insisted that we should proceed?

Mr. Short: On the specific point about sugar, I have announced a debate on two EEC documents. They are extremely wide and will certainly give an opportunity to debate the matter that my hon. Friend wishes to debate. On the general question, he will know that today I have put on the Order Paper a motion setting up the Select Committee on Procedure, which is to look at the whole question of how we deal with EEC matters in relation to the House.

Sir P. Bryan: Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Attorney-General to come to the House nest week to make a statement explaining to the House how he reconciles his past advice against any reprieve for the Clay Cross councillors with yesterday's Government statement?

Mr. Short: It would be a sorry day for Parliament if we allowed Mr. Bernard Levin to determine our procedure.

Mr. Jay: On sugar, is my right hon. Friend aware that what we need before Monday's debate, and what we have not yet had, is a full statement not merely of the EEC arrangement but of the details of the Australian offer?

Mr. Short: I shall certainly convey my right hon. Friend's views to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and ask him to be as forthcoming as he can about that and other matters concerned with sugar in our debate on the two EEC documents.

Mr. Peyton: I watt to put two points to the Leader of the House. First, will he dissociate himself from the totally improper remarks concerning Sir Arnold Hall made by his hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Tuck)? Secondly, will he reflect very deeply on the fact that Mr. Bernard Levin never gives such bad advice to the Government or to anyone else as the Government provide for themselves? [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Gwynfor Evans.

Mr. Gwynfor Evans: Has the right hon. Gentleman observed Early-Day Motion No. 14 on the Order Paper, concerning the proposed closure of the East Moors steelworks? Is he aware of the very grave importance of this issue to the capital city of Cardiff, involving, as it does, as many as 10,000 men, who would be thrown out of work if these works were closed? In view of its importance, will the right hon. Gentleman seek an early opportunity of allowing us to debate the matter?
[That this House considers that the closure of the East Moors steelworks would have the most serious consequences for the economic and social life of the city of Cardiff in that many other businesses would be placed in jeopardy and many other work people would become unemployed; and urges the Government to give the closest attention to those consequences in its current review of the British Steel Corporation's plant closure programme..]

Mr. Short: My noble Friend Lord Beswick has received many representations about this matter. He is considering them as part of his review, and we had better await the outcome of that review.

Mr. Stoddart: Has the Leader of the House seen Early-Day Motion No. 28 dealing with Plessey Company's sacking, at a moment's notice, of many of my constituents? May I have an assurance from him that next week he will announce the early introduction of a Bill on employment protection?
[That this House condemns the Plessey Company policy of dismissing at a moment's notice workers in their Swindon establishments and declaring redundancies without previous notice to or consultation with appropriate trade unions, believes that such cavalier and inhumane treatment of working people can only intensify bitterness and divisiveness and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to bring forward, urgently, legislation which will render such action impossible in the future as well as giving priority to taking into public ownership wholly or partly those industries which, like Plessey, derive a large part of their work from Government sources.]

Mr. Short: I have a great deal of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says, and he can be assured that the legislation will be brought forward at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. Kershaw: In view of what the Leader of the House has just said, will he nevertheless recognise the very real anxiety in all parts of the country about the bills of indemnity which the Government appear to be about to bring in for crooked councillors? Now, from what—

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. John Mendelson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, that I very rarely seek to interrupt proceedings—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] That is absolutely true and will be on the records of the House, in spite of the girlish laughter from the Opposition Benches.
Is it in order, Mr. Speaker, for an hon. Member to make an accusation which clearly implies criminal culpability—[An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] All right, hon. Members may go on record. I am asking Mr. Speaker whether it is in order under the protection of the privilege of this House for an hon. Member to make an accusation of criminal culpability against elected representatives on a local authority within the United Kingdom and


whether the hon. Member ought not to be asked to withdraw the accusation.

Mr. Skinner: Let the hon. Gentleman say it outside the House.

Mr. Speaker: I regret very much this kind of imputation, either against individuals or against bodies, either inside or outside the House. My jurisdiction applies only to the House. It would be quite improper to make such a suggestion against a Member of the House. I am afraid, however, that what the hon. Member said was not out of order.

Hon. Members: "Withdraw."

Mr. Kershaw: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In the first place, I should like to ask whether it is in order to raise a point of order during Business Questions. On the second point, Mr. Speaker, if it is thought undesirable that I should call these councillors crooked, I call them criminal instead.

Mr. Kinnock: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Kershaw: Is it not further the case—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the House will calm down. It is perfectly in order to raise a point of order during Question Time. It is not really desirable but it is perfectly in order, and it depends, really, on the provocation. However, I would hope that the House will now proceed.

Mr. Kinnock: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I regret delaying the House, but as some of the councillors to whom the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) has referred are constituents of mine, including justices of the peace, I should like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, without wanting dictation from the Chair—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shut up."]—or hysterical interruptions—whether you will reconsider the matter of what an hon. Member may call people who are guilty of no crime.

Mr. Speaker: Again, I would ask the House to take this matter calmly. One hears all sorts of imputations made, for example from one side against businessmen. I regret them equally. I think that it is wrong for people to use the privi-

lege of this House to make imputations against any section of the community. I hope that we can now move on.

Mr. Kershaw: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] May I have an answer to my question? In view of what the Prime Minister said this afternoon—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."]—that he proposes also to introduce some kind of indemnity for law-defying trade unions—if I may put it like that on this occasion—is not the Leader of the House aware that this is a very grave constitutional legal situation which the House will want to debate?

Mr. Short: The hon. Gentleman's terminology is beneath contempt. The councillors did what they did. They were driven to do what they did because of the vicious and divisive legislation of the previous Government. With regard to the question, I have nothing to add to what the Prime Minister said.

Mr. Burden: Will the Leader of the House give some indication of when the O'Brien Report is likely to be debated?

Mr. Short: I am very sorry to tell the hon. Gentleman that I cannot yet give an indication, but I have been pursuing this matter vigorously since the exchanges last week. I hope to be able to write to the hon. Gentleman shortly about the matter. I know of his great interest in it.

Mr. Lipton: Does the Leader of the House think that one day will be adequate for the Second Reading of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill, with all its complicated algebraic formulae? Will it not take the Minister in charge of the Bill almost all day to explain the Bill to hon. Members?

Mr. Short: All our legislation is entirely explicable and easily understood. I am sure that one day will be adequate to debate it.

Mr. Fell: While I well understand that it is unlikely that we shall be able to have a debate next week upon the televising of the House, may I have some assurance, nevertheless, that the debate on televising the House will take place fairly soon—at least soon enough so that the memory of the last occasion on which the House was televised will be clear in the minds of Members?

Mr. Short: That is a very fair point. I certainly give the House that assurance. The debate will be held very soon, certainly before Christmas.

Mr. Speaker: I have one thing to add to what I said on the recent points of order, which had escaped my memory. I have now had the opportunity to refresh it. On page 418 of Erskine May it says:
Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.

Mrs. Hayman: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to Early-Day Motion No. 5, concerning the Hawker-Siddeley 146 project, which stands in my name and the names of many of my hon. Friends? Since hundreds of jobs are involved this week, next week and in succeeding weeks, since thousands of jobs are involved in the aviation industry and elsewhere over the next decade, and since the whole future of the civil aerospace industry in Britain is at stake on this one project, will he, in spite of the pressures of time upon him, make an opportunity for a debate on the subject on the Floor of the House?
[That this House deplores the unilateral management decision to cancel the Hawker-Siddeley 146, the only new civil project being currently developed by the British aircraft industry and involving the future of 20,000 jobs; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to take immediate emergency action to rescue the aircraft and to fulfil the manifesto commitment to take the aerospace industry into public ownership as soon as possible.]

Mr. Short: The Government are deeply concerned about the future of the project in the light of the company's decision. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry said he was hoping to meet management and workers concerned and will make a statement to the House when he has considered those meetings.

Mr. Fell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You were kind enough a moment ago to refresh your memory on what had been said during the points of order that were raised a few moments ago on what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw). During the points of order about what he said there was a certain amount of bad temper, naturally enough. Would it not be grossly unfair, however, for my

hon. Friend to be accused of something of which he was not guilty?

Mr. Speaker: I can relieve the hon. Member's mind at once. My remark was directed not to any one hon. Member but to many hon. Members who frequently offend against this rule.

Mr. Fell: Further to that point—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take further points of order at the end of these questions.

Sir F. Bennett: May I refer to the Clay Cross matter in a less contentious fashion—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because for once I wish to be heard? Yesterday's statement was very complex. It is difficult for some people to understand exactly how the burden will be redistributed fairly on those who may or may not have gained some advantage in the past. I do not know whether the Leader of the House was looking bewildered or simply unhappy, but he did not seem to be taking in fully what the statement was about. May we, therefore, have considerable time between publication of the Bill to deal with this matter and its Second Reading, or may we have a White Paper published beforehand setting out the details of a complex issue which has undercurrents of great importance to the constitution of this country?

Mr. Short: The period of time between publication of the Bill and Second Reading is normally about a fortnight. I will bear in mind what the hon. Member said. If it is the general wish, we would allow more time, but there is no need for a White Paper. The matter is fully set out in HANSARD. I shall bear in mind what the hon. Member said.

Mr. Spearing: Has my right hon. Friend seen Early-Day Motion No. 6 concerning the World Food Conference? The motion has been signed by more than 40 hon. Members on both sides of the House. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for a statement by the Minister of Agriculture or the Minister for Overseas Development at the termination of the conference, and, if possible, a debate later on?
[That this House, believing that, in view of the seriousness of the world food crisis, the response of Her Majesty's Government to the proposals presented for


consideration at the forthcoming World Food Conference is disappointing, calls on Her Majesty's Government to make a more positive response to this important world conference.]

Mr. Short: There was an opportunity to raise this matter last Thursday, but I shall certainly pass on the point raised by my hon. Friend.

Mr. John Davies: The Leader of the House is certainly aware of the Second Special Report of the European Secondary Legislation Committee which in the last Parliament recommended the new Parliament to set up as rapidly as possible a repeat of that Committee because of the growing amount of work. I am informed that the backlog with which any new successor Committee will be faced is greater than that which it faced at its inception last May. Has the right hon. Gentleman any intention of introducing an early motion to set up a Committee in order that it may get on with its work?

Mr. Short: The motion is on the Order Paper today. The names are not printed because we are still waiting for more names. I have discussed this matter with the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies), and I hope that what we have done will help. I had thought that perhaps the Procedure Committee should consider the mater first, but, if it is the general wish of the House, we shall be willing to set up a scrutiny committee immediately. If hon. Members have views about the matter perhaps they will discuss them with me.

Mr. Kinnock: How soon are we likely to debate the National Health Service so that we may consider the threat posed by consultants, who are the greatest beneficiaries and the greatest profiteers from the service and now seek deliberately to sabotage it?

Mr. Short: I am afraid that it will not be next week, but I shall bear the point in mind.

Mr. Emery: Will the Leader of the House consider, if not next week, certainly in the immediate future the reports of the economic planning councils which are made specifically to the Government, and debates on them? I ask specifically for a debate on the report of

the South-West Economic Planning Council, which has caused a wide division of views between the lower part of the South-West and the areas around Bristol It will do neither the Government's advisory committees nor the work of the planning councils any good if time is not found to debate the reports.

Mr. Short: I have a great deal of sympathy on this point. The hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman), who is not in her place today, has raised the matter on a number of occasions. We must try to find some way of debating the question. If we do not discuss it in the Chamber, a possibility would be a regional committee or something like that. I shall look at this and discuss it with the hon. Member if he has any ideas to put forward.

Mr. Watt: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to Early-Day Motion No. 18, which is signed by Members of all parties? Does he not agree that the emergency facing the livestock industry is far greater than the emergency of digging a hole between England and France? Should we not have an early emergency debate on the livestock industry?
[That this House, aware of the desperate financial plight of farmers in the livestock section of agriculture, whose situation has been aggravated by the fodder shortage and the appalling weather during harvest time in the uplands and hills, calls upon the Prime Minister to intervene personally, with a view to introducing measures to alleviate their distress and to restore a measure of confidence to the industry.]

Mr. Short: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture is aware of the concern about the beef industry and is urgently considering all the representations made to him in the debate last Thursday.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Under the last Tory Government I and a number of other hon. Members tried—even to the extent of going to the then Prime Minister—to get Ministers to reply to letters from Members of Parliament in periods under five, six, eight and in some instances 12 weeks. Will my right hon. Friend advise all Ministers that they should send a formal acknowledgment of receipt within 10 days. Will he tell them that if an interim reply cannot be sent within two or three weeks a reason should be given,


and certainly a substantive reply should be sent within four or five weeks?

Mr. Short: I repeat what I said in the last Parliament, that if my hon. Friend has any specific examples he must let me have them and I will investigate the matter—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Look at your files; they are full of examples.

Mr. Short: I shall certainly do that.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: May we have an assurance that there will be a statement next week by the Minister of Agriculture on the urgent consideration that is promised for the reimposition of the 60-day waiting period for Irish cattle to qualify for the slaughter premium? This would obviously help to alleviate mounting tension in the cattle ports.

Mr. Short: I cannot promise a statement but I will pass on to my right hon. Friend the hon. Member's point, which is a most important one.

Mr. Molloy: In answer to earlier questions my right hon. Friend said that the sugar debate would be wide-ranging. Will he consider asking the Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will endeavour between now and the debate to see the warehousemen, the refiners and the distributors of sugar so that he may get some factual appreciation of the current situation? I am sure that would assist the debate.

Mr. Short: My hon. Friend will find, when the debate takes place, that my right hon. Friend has already done this.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: In view of certain remarks by the chief executive of the British Steel Corporation on industrial disputes and since the corporation is now in danger of losing blast furnace capacity, will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Industry to come to the House next week and explain the matter fully?

Mr. Short: I shall see that my right hon. Friend is made aware of the point.

Dr. Phipps: In view of the support for Early-Day Motion No. 24, will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity when arranging the timetable for the proposed legislation to ban hare coursing to extend

the Bill so as to include other forms of blood sports, so that they can all be banned at the same time?
[That this House welcomes the Prime Minister's statement that time will be found this session for a Bill to ban hare coursing, but believes that the same time would prove sufficient for a Bill to ban all forms of blood sports; and urges Her Majesty's Government to introduce such a Bill in its stead.]

Mr. Short: I am afraid that one step at a time is enough for me. If we can get the legislation on hare coursing through the House during this Session it will be a major step forward, and we could then look towards dealing with other sports.

Mr. Lane: Will the Leader of the House, instead of remaining silent, now accept the invitation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) and dissociate himself from the extremely offensive remarks made earlier about Sir Arnold Hall?

Mr. Short: No, Sir.

Mr. Farr: Is the Leader of the House able to tell the House when we shall discuss the referendum on the Common Market? How will it be presented to the House? Can he say whether it will be in the form of a Bill, or a debate, or a Green Paper? Can he give some idea when this matter is likely to be forth-coming?

Mr. Short: If the Government decide to have a referendum—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"]—legislation will be brought before the House and will, if the House agrees, receive the Royal Assent in time for a referendum to be held by October next year.

Miss Maynard: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to Early-Day Motion No. 13, in my name, calling for the abolition of the agricultural tied cottage system? Seventy names have now been appended to this early—day motion. Can my right hon. Friend say when this matter will be dealt with?
[That this House urges the Government to abolish the agricultural tied cottage system in this session.]

Mr. Short: I understand my hon. Friend's views on this matter; she has


fought for it during the whole of her adult life, and I pay great tribute to her for this. This matter is part of Labour Party policy. We have so far announced our programme only for the first Session of what I hope will be a five-year Parliament, so my hon. Friend should not give up hope. I hope that proposals on this will appear in a Queen's Speech early in the life of this Parliament.

Mr. Hastings: Following what was said earlier about the Hawker-Siddeley 146, does the Leader of the House recognise that many of us on this side of the House regard this as an urgent matter for debate, not least because we realise that it is the uncertainty which arises as the result of the intention to nationalise which is the real threat to this project?

Mr. Short: I agreed with, and had a great deal of sympathy with, the hon. Gentleman until the last few words of his question. We share his concern about the project and the decision of the company on it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is willing and anxious to discuss this matter with both the company and the workers. When my right hon. Friend has completed his review and has anything to announce he will come to the House and announce it.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Can the Leader of the House help us? There may have been a misunderstanding. He said earlier, when questioned about European secondary legislation, that he had tabled a motion for a Committee to be set up, but the only motion on the Order Paper appears to be that relating to a Committee on Procedure. Has a wrong heading been put on this?

Mr. Short: No, it is a Committee on procedure. If the hon. Gentleman reads the motion he will see that it says:
…to consider what alterations, if any are desirable for the more efficient despatch of the Public Business of the House in relation to European subordinate legislation…".

Mr. Adley: The Leader of the House used the word "divisive" in his description of legislation the results of which may be disregarded. This was also his view when he was Shadow Leader of the House. May we on this side of the House now take it that if my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), as

Shadow Leader of the House, decides that any legislation of the present Government is divisive, people may be encouraged to break the law? Does the Leader of the House realise the state into which he is leading the country?

Mr. Short: I have known the present Shadow Leader of the House for a long time, and I am sure that he will not feel inhibited in any way in what he says.

Mr. Peyton: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on being right for almost the first time this afternoon.

Mr. Short: That remark is just about as profound as most of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks.

Mr. Churchill: In view of the fact that the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister and certain of their right hon. Friends in the Government know all about profiteering, will the Leader of the House now dissociate himself and the Government from the remarks made by the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock) about hospital consultatnts, who do so much for the people of this country?

Mr. Short: There is nothing that I can add to the hon. Gentleman's knowledge of profiteering.

Mr. Onslow: Can the Leader of the House explain why the motion relating to the Select Committee concerned with the declaration of Members' interests provides that the Select Committee should consist of 14 Members while only 12 names are shown on the Order Paper? What is meant by the injunction in the motion:
That the Committee shall report…within the shortest reasonable period…
I hope that the Leader of the House can show the House that there is no intention to discourage Members who may wish to give evidence to the Select Committee—like the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton)—from doing so?

Mr. Short: There is no such intention. The Select Committee sat a long time during the last Parliament. We have not yet got all the names; further names can be added when they are received. One former member of the Select Committee is no longer a Member of the House. We were anxious to get the Select Committee's report as quickly as possible and so


we have put this matter on the Order Paper.

Mr. Percival: I have a clear question and I hope that I shall get a clear answer. Can the Leader of the House say when the Phillimore Report will be published, and can we expect a debate on this before Christmas?

Mr. Short: I cannot give any estimate about that without notice.

Mr. Costain: We had gained the impression from the Leader of the House that we were to discuss the question of seat belts, but he has today made no mention of this being included in the business for next Monday.

Mr. Short: I am sorry about this, but it was necessary to rearrange the business for Monday. This matter will reappear shortly, and, as we have said, there will be a free vote on it.

Dr. Glyn: May I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to Early-Day Motion No. 4, which is concerned with giving better opportunities for back-bench speakers? Will he consider a debate on this and other procedural points? Secondly, will he consider re-establishing the Committee on Procedure?
[That this House considers that, in order to increase the opportunities for back-benchers to contribute to proceedings, the occupant of the Chair should have the power to limit the time taken by back-bench speakers to 15 minutes in any debate, except by leave of the House.]

Mr. Short: The first point is a matter for the Chair. On the second point my answer is "yes".

Mr. Speaker: I allowed business questions to go on for a long time on this occasion because I had regard for the business before the House today. It must not be taken as a precedent that business questions will always last for 35 minutes.
I shall now deal with points of order. The hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) is first.

Mr. Fell: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. On a point of order, you will recall that earlier my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) made some remarks about the Clay Cross coun-

cillors, to which exception was taken by —[Interruption.] Everybody knows precisely what I am talking about. The remarks were taken exception to by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson). [Interruption.] Yes, indeed. If the House and hon. Members on the Government side will allow me, I wish to raise this matter on a point of order because I believe that a wrong impression will have gone out from the House as a result of the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Penistone. There was earlier an immediate roar of support for the hon. Member for Penistone. [Interruption.] It was absolute nonsense. We are here to protect the rights of individuals, and in a small way I want to protect the rights of the Clay Cross councillors, who are friends of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). It is now clear that they were led up the garden in the biggest possible way by the leaders of the Labour Party. This was the reason why my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) tried to raise the point.

Mr. Speaker: This has nothing remotely to do with the Chair.

Mr. Fell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Nevertheless, Sir, you did take very seriously the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), and you interrupted the proceedings a little later to give a further opinion on what had happened. I thought that you were giving the benefit of the doubt against the Clay Cross councillors rather than against certain Members of this House.

Mr. Speaker: All I did was to quote from Erskine May, and I shall do so again:
Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.
I wish all Members in all quarters of the House would remember that more frequently.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. A little earlier I was rebuked explicitly by the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), and implied by you, Sir, for something I said which was taken, and probably rightly taken, as a personal attack on somebody outside the House. I did not intend what I said as a personal attack. The phrase I


used was "the wrecking tactics of the spiteful and irresponsible Sir Arnold Hall". What I meant to say was "the spiteful and irreponsible wrecking tactics of Sir Arnold Hall", which is not the same thing.

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman has made the matter much clearer, I am sure we shall be grateful.

BILL PRESENTED

OFFSHORE PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT (SCOTLAND)

Mr. Secretary Ross, supported by Mr. Secretary Varley, Mr. Bruce Millan, and Mr. Edmund Dell, presented a Bill to provide for the acquisition by the Secretary of State of land in Scotland for purposes relating to exploration for and exploitation of offshore petroleum; to enable the Secretary of State to carry out works and facilitate operations for those purposes; to regulate such operations in certain sea areas; to provide for the reinstatement of land used for those purposes; and for purposes connected with those matters: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 8.]

Orders of the Day — GENERAL RATE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

4.14 p.m.

The Minister for Planning and Local Government (Mr. John Silkin): I beg to move. That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The scope of the Bill is very narrow and, despite my natural good temper and moderation, I know that Mr. Speaker would rule me out of order if I were to go too far from the technical explanation of the Bill itself and how it had arisen. Its purpose is simply to postpone the 1978 revaluation. It does not attempt to deal with the wider issue of the rating system in general. This is being examined in detail by the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance under Mr. Frank Layfield. We shall have to await that committee's report before we can take decisions about changes in the present system.
The Bill itself contains two clauses. Clause 1(1) inserts 1981 after 1973 in Section 68(1) of the General Rate Act 1967. This has the effect of postponing the 1978 revaluation and starting the statutory five-year cycle again from 1981.
Clause 1(2) gives the Secretary of State power by order to make further post-ponements one year at a time—1982 for 1981 and, later, 1983 for 1982. But this would be subject to the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and this is provided for in Clause 1(3). Clause 2 merely sets out the short title and provides that the Act extends only to England and Wales. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is considering the position in Scotland.
Our modern rating system derives in the main from the Poor Relief Act of 1601, the purpose of which was stated in Section 1 of that Act to be
To raise weekly, or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar and other, and every occupier of lands, houses, tythes impropriate or appropriations of tythes, coalmines or saleable underwoods in the said parish, in such competent sum and sums of money as they shall think fit".


The House will see that all the socio-economic groups of 1601 were represented.
During the ensuing centuries the statute was modified somewhat—not least by Rex v. Andover, 1777, in which Lord Mansfield said:
It would make the Poor Laws very oppressive if a man is to be taxed to the extent of his whole personal estate and income 
—a view on local income tax which many people today might dispute.
Local income tax, together with every other source of local government finance, will no doubt again be considered by the Layfield Committee. It is because the Committee is making so wide-ranging an inquiry into local government finance, and because its recommendations will come reasonably at the end of next year, that this Bill is needed today.
The time required to enable the Lay-field Committee to report and for the appropriate consideration to be given to that report means that if the committee were to recommend a new way of financing local government, or indeed a new basis for valuation, this could not be put into effect by 1978. Indeed, work for the 1978 valuation in the normal way should be starting now. Although revaluations are supposed to occur every five years, they remind one of nothing so much as the traditional story of the painting of the Forth Bridge which, we are told, never ends.
In the present instance, apart from the normal difficulty of too few valuers examining too many rateable values, there is added an impossible time scale. We cannot reasonably expect Layfield to report until the very end of 1975. There must then be a proper period for consideration of that report, and a further period for legislation, should that be necessary. To set in motion the list preparations for a 1978 revaluation which may never be put into effect would be an irresponsible waste.
I must admit that I might have been a great deal more concerned at asking the House to approve this postponement if I were not aware of the history of previous revaluations. The provision for five-year regular revaluations first appeared in the Rating and Revaluation Act 1925. Between that date and 1948,

for various reasons, there were only two revaluations instead of the four that one would have expected.

Mr. Churchill: There was a war.

Mr. Silkin: That may account for part of the explanation. Following the Local Government Act of 1948, new valuation lists should have come into operation in 1952. But the then Conservative Government, under the hon. Gentleman's grandfather, after its election in 1951 postponed the revaluation until 1953 because of disagreements on the basis assessment.
In 1953, however, that Government changed their mind again, and provided for a new valuation to operate from 1956. In 1959, the next Conservative Government again postponed revaluation—this time until 1963—because of the lack of rental evidence available in time. And in 1966 the Labour Government postponed the revaluation due in 1968 until 1973, because of
a shortage of valuers and the increasing commitments of the valuation office".
Therefore, I have a number of very respectable precedents for my action today.

Mr. Arthur Jones: Has there been a revaluation under a Socialist administration?

Mr. Silkin: I think that I might need notice of that question. What I can say is that since 1925, regrettably—I do not expect the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Jones) to agree with me—we have had far too many Conservative Governments. Incidentally, I know that the House will accept from me that on this occasion it is only the existence of the Layfield inquiry and our intention to act upon it which has made this postponement necessary.
Nevertheless, I know that there are those in local authority circles who are not happy at the proposed postponement. I am sorry if there are also those who feel that we should have consulted the local authorities. I understand how sensitive local authorities can be on this point. Indeed, when I was shadowing my present Department in Opposition, my speeches alluded to lack of consultation so frequently that I never really


felt I had got into my stride until I had made the point.
On this occasion we were well aware of the views of the local authorities and of the opposition many felt to revaluation. We felt, therefore, that what was required on this occasion was not so much consultation as reasonable notice of our decision, and this notice was accordingly given to them in September—two months ago.
As to the local authorities' arguments against postponement, I assure them that the Government's proposals on land and the obvious requirement for valuers which they would entail had nothing to do with this decision.
The White Paper on Land (Cmnd. 5730) certainly accepts in paragraph 36 that there is a shortage of skilled manpower. But, as the House will see from the Explanatory Memorandum of this Bill, postponing a revaluation will, alas, not produce a single additional professional valuer for the urgent and popular task of bringing development land into community ownership. It will not, as the Memorandum shows, result in any quantifiable staff saving, and will simply reduce for the time being the requirement for non-professional staff—a very different matter from supplying valuers to do another task.
A criticism more often heard is that, by postponing revaluation, we are eroding the rate base of rating authorities—in other words, that, whereas extra rateable value would have accrued to them in 1978, this extra value will not now accrue until 1981 or later. I find this argument somewhat difficult to follow. Certainly rate base is increased when a new rateable value is created, but merely increasing the rateable value of existing property through revaluation does not affect the rate base. Postponement of revaluation has no effect on the taxing capacity of rating authorities. Presentationally, it may look better that the rate in the pound is lower: the amount that the ratepayer has to pay, however, is not affected.
Having said that, I think that there is one criticism which has more substance in it. It is true that the postponement of revaluation causes anomalies as between one ratepayer and another.

Since the rateable values are not up to date, postponement means that some ratepayers bear a greater share of the rate burden than perhaps they ought, while others bear less. A good example of this problem is illustrated by Section 21 of the Local Government Act 1974 which our predecessors passed—though I make no point on that—which provides that, from 1st April this year, the installation of central heating or an improvement to property that would result in a rateable value increase less than a prescribed limit shall be disregarded until the next revaluation. It is true that the effect of this is that those who enjoy the concession will enjoy it for longer because the revaluation is postponed, and therefore they will pay a lower share of the rate burden than is absolutely fair. All this I concede.

Mr. Stephen Ross: This anomaly about the installation of central heating is one of the matters which have been brought to my attention. As the right hon. Gentleman is postponing the revaluation, will he instruct valuation officers that people who have suffered as a result of putting in an installation prior to that time may have some reduction in their rate burden?

Mr. Silkin: That is an interesting point. However, I should not like to comment on it at the moment. I shall look at it to see what may be done. But the position remains this, I think. There is a degree of unfairness in that connection, and I accept it fully. It is an anomaly, but it is one in a whole balance. We must take the balance as a whole, and that is why I have made this point, conceding that it is difficult but at the same time having weighed it carefully.

Mr. Churchill: The right hon. Gentleman accepts that the postponement of this revaluation will cause injustice and give rise to anomalies as between different ratepayers, sometimes in the same local authority area and at other times in different areas. Therefore, will he go a little further in explaining the reason for the postponement? It is very difficult to understand. If it is not, as he says, that these valuers are required to operate the enormously burdensome proposals of the Government for the nationalisation of building land, why are not the Government able to reduce their valuation staff?

Mr. Silkin: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the land proposals. When they come, he will see why he is on a false point. It is a false point. I want to stick to this General Rate Bill and to try to explain why I believe it to be necessary to postpone this revaluation
The revaluation was postponed solely because, as I have already said, if it had not been, work should be starting on it now. Had we allowed it to proceed, it would have shown that we were not really in earnest in our setting up of the Layfield inquiry. On the contrary, it is our intention that the Layfield inquiry shall have the fullest possible scope, and that its recommendations shall be treated with the greatest consideration.
I started by saying that modern rating derives from the Statute of the first Elizabeth. It has had a good run and it is now time that the basis of our local government finance as a whole was examined in the light of the age in which we live. It is in that spirit that I commend this Bill to the House.

4.27 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Rossi: It seems to have become habit forming for Labour Governments to seek a postponement of rating revaluation as soon as they have come to office—

Mr. John Silkin: We are not alone in that.

Mr. Rossi: One was announced by the Labour Government during their 1964–66 administration, and within weeks of the election of the 1966–70 administration the Local Government Act of 1966 was introduced to postpone rating revaluation from 1968 to 1973. Today, although there was not a word about it in the Labour Party's election manifesto and not a word about it in the Gracious Speech which we debated the whole of last week, we have a Bill on the second legislative day of this Parliament to postpone rating revaluation from 1978 to 1981.

Mr. Silkin: May I ask the hon. Gentleman this? Let us suppose that his party had won the election. They would not have dissolved the Layfield Committee, because they nominated people to serve on it. Would they not have had to postpone revaluation?

Mr. Rossi: We would have coupled it with other measures which would have meant the complete dismantling of the rating system for the domestic ratepayer. But revaluation would have had to continue, notwithstanding Layfield, because of industrial and commercial properties. There would have been no need to postpone it.
Each Labour Government postponement has had the effect of delaying revaluation until after the last possible date for the next succeeding General Election. That is the distinction between Labour's postponements and others which were brought about, for example, because of professional disagreements about the basis of valuation, which was one of the examples which the right hon. Gentleman gave just now as having occurred under a Conservative administration.
The House is entitled to ask whether this habit of postponing revaluations until after the last possible date for the next General Election is mere coincidence, "happenstance", or something far more premeditated. I ask this because no doubt each time rateable values are adjusted, for the majority of people they are adjusted upwards. Anxiety is caused because of the fear that this means an increase in the rate burden. What is often forgotten on those occasions is that the weight of the rate burden is determined by the total expenditure and financial commitment undertaken by local authorities and the extent to which the Government of the day are prepared to lighten that burden by Exchequer subsidy. The real effect of revaluation is to adjust the rate burden as equitably and as justly as possible between one ratepayer and the next as the properties they occupy become more or less valuable through changing circumstances.
In this connection—and this goes to the heart of the Bill—it is worth recalling the observations of the Allen Report on the impact of rates on households, Command 2582, of February 1965, at page 26. It said:
Property values change: some types of dwellings in some districts become more sought-after than others. Rents change as fashions change and as incomes rise. If rates are to be based, as they are intended to be, on current rental values, rateable values need to be revised at regular and frequent intervals. Ideally all property should be revalued every year but for administrative reasons this is impracticable.


Now we have a proposal that will postpone revaluation for eight years. The last Labour effort in this area was to postpone it for 10 years.
In this regard it is instructive to refer to the debates which took place in this House when revaluation was last postponed in 1966. I quote from the late Richard Crossman, then Minister of Housing and Local Government, who said:
it
—that is the rateable value—
remains at a fixed sum until a valuer comes along and reassesses one's property. If the quinquennial revaluation does not take place, then what justice there ever was between ratepayer and ratepayer will become progressively distorted as one property increases in value but pays no extra rates and another decreases in value but gets no automatic remission.
Even if the valuation were always fair and intelligible, which it very often is not, rates are a tax which start getting out of date the very moment the valuation is over."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th June, 1966; Vol. 729, c. 1265.]
So we have the present Government distorting justice as between ratepayer and ratepayer for very little good reason that is discernible. In 1966 Richard Crossman gave as his reason for postponing the 1968 revaluation the "shortage of valuers", a matter to which the right hon. Gentleman has alluded. Richard Crossman went on to say, with characteristic honesty, that such shortage was intensified by the creation of the Land Commission.
Today we have no Land Commission. Instead we have equally objectionable proposals for the nationalisation of land, coupled with all that Land Commission Act jargon of "development value", "development tax" or "betterment levy", which will be hinged upon those concepts beloved of Socialists, "base values" and "current use values". I know that the right hon. Gentleman wishes to rise and possibly answer the question I am about to put to him—surely this must mean an expensive, unwieldy bureaucracy, created for the confiscation of private property? A very heavy workload must be thrown upon the valuers and the Inland Revenue. No wonder they have had to be released from rating revaluation. Or have I got the concept incorrect?

Mr. John Silkin: As usual, the hon. Gentleman has got the concept incorrect. I thought I had assured the House—as I have often said, one does not always

listen to oneself and it is natural that other people should not either—that it was the Layfield inquiry and only that inquiry which caused this decision. I thought it was conceivable that the hon. Gentleman might make this rather false point and I took the precaution of finding out. Suppose there had been no White Paper on land, suppose there were no land proposals whatever, it would still have been necessary, because of the Layfield inquiry, to come to the House and ask for postponement. I hope the hon. Gentleman is satisfied.

Mr. Rossi: I will deal with the point about the necessity of the Layfield inquiry in a moment. The right hon. Gentleman has neatly sidestepped the question about whether the proposals for land nationalisation and finding out "base values" and "current use values" and all the other wretched things so beloved of the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will throw an additional burden on the Inland Revenue. In parenthesis, I would point out that it is interesting to note that when rating revaluation was taken away from the local authorities and given to the Inland Revenue in 1948 by a Labour Government it was done, to quote what was being said at the time, "in the interests of greater efficiency".
No wonder local authorities are a little rueful at these persistent Labour Government postponements, again on the grounds of a shortage of staff in the Inland Revenue Department. [Interruption.] I thought the right hon. Gentleman made a reference to shortage of staff a moment or two ago. My hon. Friends confirm that that is what he said. The record can be seen tomorrow.
All of this will be done at the expense of
justice…between ratepayer and ratepayer.
At least Richard Crossman came clean with the House.
What we are being told today is that revaluation has to be postponed because it coincides with the work of the Layfield Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance. I believe that the Press statement issued on 9th September by the Secretary of State for the Environment announcing the postponement spoke about avoiding
 any risk of prejudicing the outcome of the wide-ranging review.


What could be interpreted as more of a prejudgment or pre-emption of the Lay-field Report than the postponement of revaluation? [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman says "No," but this is certainly the interpretation placed upon the postponement by the Association of County Councils, the Association of District Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. I must agree with them.
The right hon. Gentleman seems surprised. May I refer him to the correspondence files in his Department. On 10th September, the day after the Secretary of State issued his Press statement, these august bodies to whom I have referred wrote to the Permanent Secretary in the Department of the Environment saying:
We wish to express the most profound dismay and anxiety over the total lack of prior consultation about the decision to postpone the quinquennial rating valuation, a matter clearly of great importance to local government. We would also express similar dismay and anxiety about the decision itself. In spite of what is said in the Department of the Environment letter of 9th September announcing the decision, it is clear that the abandonment of preparations for the next revaluation could turn out to be a serious prejudging or pre-empting of the Layfield Committee's Report, due by the end of 1975.
So long as local government is required to raise its basic revenue by means of the rating system that system should be kept up to date and failure to do so will introduce inequity and distortion as between ratepayers and as between authorities whose resources are measured by rateable values.

Mr. John Silkin: I hate to keep on interrupting the hon. Gentleman, because it makes it appear to be a private war, which it is not, but can he explain how it could prejudice the Layfield inquiry?

Mr. Rossi: Plainly the interpretation put on this matter by the three associations which I have mentioned has led them to assume that the Minister has already made up his mind on the action that he will take on the Layfield inquiry.

Mr. Silkin: indicated dissent.

Mr. Rossi: It is no good the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head, because those associations are not fools. They are extremely responsible bodies. They have all come to the conclusion that that is the only interpretation that they can put on the Government's decision to postpone revaluation. The right hon. Gentleman

indicates that that is not the case, but surely, as the Minister in charge of a Department concerned with local government, he must take cognisance of and have due regard to the thoughts which he has obviously put into the minds of those associations. I put it no higher than that.
If I felt assured that the reason behind the postponement was that the Minister had decided upon the abolition of the rating system as far as it applies to domestic ratepayers, I should be less critical of him. It is clear that the rating system, with all its inequities and because of its regressive nature, accentuated at a time of high inflation, is at risk of losing consensus acceptance by the population and, as a result, could readily break down.
The troubles and protests of the current rating year will be nothing compared with those of next year when it is authoritatively forecast that rates will increase by another 50, 60 or even 100 per cent. in different parts of the country. That will assuredly happen if my information is correct that the Secretary of State for the Environment has given a brusque rejoinder to the pleas of local authorities for commensurate assistance of about £1,500 million. However, I cannot be too sanguine about the right hon. Gentleman's intentions either to give the necessary aid or drastically to reform the rating system—and here I give my own opinion and not that of the associations which I have quoted.
I cannot be too sanguine about his intention to reform the rating system so as to give relief to the ordinary ratepayer because at the Labour Party conference in Newcastle in February 1973 the Secretary of State for the Environment said:
At a time of high taxation—and taxation should be higher under a Labour Government if we are to carry out our social programmes—we shall never find another source of as much money as accrues through the rating system".
At least the ratepayers cannot complain that they were not warned; and many millions of them will live to rue their decision of 10th October.
One cannot but contrast the insensitive and autocratic attitude of the Secretary of State for the Environment towards the hardship of ratepayers with the words of his predecessor, Richard Crossman. As


long ago as 5th May 1965, Richard Crossman said:
…what we face now is a situation in respect of rates which is so serious that we must introduce reform and a radical change in the shortest possible time.
A little later he said:
No one can afford to tolerate rates going up at a compound interest of 8 per cent.…The system must be changed".
Then he gave a solemn pledge:
We shall reform the rates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1965; Vol. 711, c. 1492–3.]

Mr. Stephen Ross: I have never heard so much hypocrisy from the official Opposition on the question of rating since I became a Member. The last Conservative administration produced a Green Paper and then a White Paper. They dealt with the reform of local government before dealing with these matters. Why did not the Conservative Party do what the hon. Gentleman is now suggesting when it was in office?

Mr. Rossi: I accept that we produced a Green Paper, which showed that the question of rate reform was not easy, but we were not faced in those days with the inflationary situation which exists today, with the impact on ordinary ratepayers that has operated in the last year and currently. That is what has concentrated the mind wonderfully, and that is why we were determined, if returned to office, completely to recast the rating system in this Parliament. We started with a pledge of an immediate transfer of a rate burden of £500 million to the benefit of all ratepayers by the removal of the incidence of teachers' salaries and the cost of fire services and police services from the ratepayer to the taxpayer. That would immediately have dealt with a quarter of the total rate demand on current figures. That was our immediate intention.
We believed that the abolition of the domestic rating system should be done over the life of this Parliament. That was a firm pledge which we gave the country, and it is something which the present Government clearly do not intend to do if the quotation which I have given from the February 1973 speech of the Secretary of State for the Environment is to be relied upon, because he said that Socialism means higher rates and higher taxes, and the Government will not let go of the rating system because it pro-

duces so much money. That is the difference between the two parties on this matter.
Richard Crossman spoke in 1965 about drastically reforming the rating system because rates were rising at 8 per cent. per annum compound. He gave a firm pledge, which has now gone completely overboard, to reform the rating system. Today, in some areas there is a prospective indication of ten times Richard Crossman's figure.
We are told by the right hon. Gentleman that he cannot prejudice the committee's report, on which he will not be able to act for at least two years. Instead of tackling energetically and with determination the real rating problem, instead of introducing measures to alleviate the hardship that is being suffered by domestic ratepayers and small businessmen throughout the country, we have to waste time upon this piece of tomfoolery before us today which, at best, is designed to facilitate the nationalisation of land and, at worst, to gerrymander the next General Election.

Mr. John Silkin: I follow the hon. Gentleman's strictures, but does he intend to divide the House?

Mr. Rossi: The right hon. Gentleman well knows the arrangements that were made several days ago through the usual channels and the reasons why the House will not divide, but we reserve the right to deal with this matter in Committee, and it will be dealt with most rigorously.
I leave the right hon. Gentleman with this thought. He and his hon. Friends act on the principle that a week is a long time in politics, but they may well discover that the British public have a very long memory, and I rely upon that memory rather than on a vote in the House today.

4.51 p.m.

Mr. Jim Marshall: I was fortunate enough to catch Mr. Deputy Speaker's eye last Tuesday, so that I have made my maiden speech, but I still crave the indulgence of the House in case on occasions my inexperience shows through.
I listened with interest and some sympathy to the views of the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi), but I utterly dissociate myself from his general politics.


I have been active in local government for several years. Judging from the experience of local government and of the local government associations mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, the previous Tory administration tried the wit of county and city treasurers to the point of disbelief. We in local government did not know until the last minute how we would be able to finance local government in this financial year. Early in February this year, under the Tory administration, the arrangements for financing local government were altered at the eleventh hour. It was purely coincidental, but at about the same time as the previous General Election, at the end of March, a rate levy had to be introduced although local government did not know four or five weeks in advance what moneys were likely to be received from central Government. It is ridiculous for the hon. Gentleman to try to lay all the political blame for the difficulties which face local government on the present Labour Government.
It is naive for the Conservative Opposition to pretend to themselves, the ratepayers and the electorate at large that if they had been returned to power on 10th October they would in this financial year or in coming financial years transfer a burden of £1,000 million from the ratepayer to the general taxpayer. My arithmetic is not all that it should be, but on my calculation that would increase the standard rate of income tax by about 5p in the pound—I am advised that it is 7p in the pound.

Mr. Graham Page: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got that 7p from. It would be 4½p.

Mr. Marshall: I said that my arithmetic left something to be desired. Be that as it may, it is naive for the Opposition to pretend that in our difficult economic situation they would have transferred that burden of £1,000 million from the local ratepayer to the income tax payer.

Mr. Timothy Sainsbury: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that he prefers raising money from taxpayers and ratepayers by means which are not related to their ability to pay to raising money through progressive systems of taxation?

Mr. Marshall: I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that the Conservative Party during the recent election was

trying to bribe the electorate. I hope to deal with the point raised by the hon. Gentleman later in my speech.
My experience in local government has given me a deep belief in its ability to work for the common good. Local government is responsible for about 30 per cent. of total expenditure. Taking that level of expenditure into account and the services it provides, which play an important part in the general well being of the country, one would expect local government to be held in high public esteem. That is not so. The level of esteem is at an all-time low. That is deplorable, but many of the reasons for it are outside the control of local government.
The underlying reason is the level of inflation which we have experienced in the past 18 months to two years. The rating system is singularly ill-equiped to deal with such a level of inflation. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment set up the Layfield Committee. We all know that its terms of reference are—to look at the financing of local government as a whole. It may or may not—and this is the justification for the claim which hon. Gentlemen opposite make—recommend changes in the rating system and the present valuation system. In my opinion, that is the sole reason for this General Rate Bill.
I contend, and will continue to contend, that that itself prejudges the committee of inquiry's conclusions, because the committee may well come to the conclusion that the rating system, or one similar to that now in operation, should continue and may recommend that the present valuation system should also continue. That is one of the many possibilities. The committee may also add a rider—which my right hon. Friends who are members of the Cabinet may not like—that that system should continue.
The only way to make the system credible again is for the Government to control the overall level of inflation. I have great faith in the Government's ability to do that. The policies outlined in the Gracious Speech last week will ensure that the present level of inflation is reduced to more manageable proportions in the coming few years. When that happens, and the level of inflation is reduced, the existing rating and valuation systems will be accepted as they


were accepted by the general body of ratepayers until 18 months to two years ago. That is a real possibility.
If the committee of inquiry puts forward those proposals, we are storing up for the coming years further difficulties with which the local authorities are likely to be faced. Mention has been made of the difficulties which individual ratepayers and classes of ratepayers faced as a result of the 1956, 1963, and the 1973 revaluations. All of those revaluations, because of the delay between the implementation of one and the implementation of another, differentiated not only between individual ratepayers but between one class of ratepayer and another.
I well remember, being at the time the chairman of a finance committee in a large Midland city, the ill feeling which was aroused by the implementation of the 1973 revaluation. I remember my speech very well. I rose with a certain sense of smug complacency and self-satisfaction to announce a rate poundage which to the average ratepayer meant no overall rate increase. But that did not hide from me, or from the unfortunate ratepayers who had to pay, that the average level meant for some individual ratepayers increases of the order of 70 per cent. and more.
That is the kind of situation which arises not only from the non-implementation of valuation, but from delaying the actual preliminary work which must be done before the valuation list is obtained. That is the background to the situation against which the Bill must be considered.
I disagree with the Bill. I accept what my right hon. Friend said about revaluations. They do not increase the buoyancy of rates. My numeracy is not good, as the hon. Gentleman indicated, but at least I know that 50 is still 50 whether it is obtained by multiplying 20 by two and a half or 25 by two. That is the kind of argument that people have to resort to when trying to indicate that revaluations increase the buoyancy of local rates. They do not.
I have indicated, by drawing attention to the three previous post-war revaluations, that what those revaluations did was to shift the incidence of payment

between individual ratepayers and between different classes of ratepayer. If for one reason or another there is delay, and I accept that my right hon. Friend's reasons are the true reasons, the differences are exacerbated between one ratepayer and another and one class of ratepayer and another.
If, for example on the quinquennial system, the 1963 revaluation had been followed in 1968 by another revaluation, the increases in rates that people faced in 1973 would not have been reduced in 1973 but would have been attained in two incremental stages rather than in one large jump from 1963 to 1973. If that had been done I am sure—I hope to convince my right hon. Friend of this—that that would have reduced a great deal of the ill feeling that it aroused in ratepayers at that time.
I accept that the Government's decision is prompted solely by the setting up of the Layfield inquiry. I believe that the situation we face today requires flexibility rather than inflexibility. One of my main criticims of the Bill is its inflexibility. Clause 1(1) prescribes a time period of three years for postponement, while, later, there is statutory provision for further postponement of one year, followed by another year.
I suggest to my right hon. Friend that, in the interests of flexibility in an uncertain situation, we should consider a reduction in the post-ponement period, let us say, from three to two years—or, better still, to one year. The best of all possible worlds would be to forget about postponement for a fixed period and to use the powers in Clause 1(2) dealing with postponement by statutory instrument rather than setting a fixed limit. If that method were followed—I hope to impress upon my right hon. Friend the virtue of my suggestion—that would provide sufficient flexibility for the Government to act according to the situation as it emerges following the Layfield Committee's report.
I return to the matter raised by the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury). I realise the difficulties that local ratepayers are likely to face over the next 12 months. I know, too, that my right hon. Friends are aware of the difficulties with which they are likely to be faced.


I have sufficient faith in my right hon. Friends to know that they will protect the interests of the ordinary domestic ratepayer. I hope that in the coming months, when the overall level of local government expenditure is made known, we shall also be informed of the additional help to be given to the domestic ratepayer in the coming financial year.
I realise that the rating system is regressive. It was made less regressive when my hon. Friends introduced the rate relief system earlier this year. I do not pretend that the rating system is ideal, but it ensures to some degree the independence of local government from the interference of central government. I have informed the House of my activities in local government. I cherish the remaining freedom and independence that local government now has. I should not wish to be associated too strongly with any policy or any Bill which, in my opinion, reduced or tried to reduce that independence.
That is why I cannot say in all honesty that I welcome the Bill, because I feel that in the coming years it will tend to reduce even more the independence of local government from central Government and, perhaps more importantly in the eyes of the local ratepayers—if ratepayers they continue to be—will further discredit local government in general and local authorities in particular.

5.12 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Jones: I very much welcome the opportunity of following in the debate the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) and of saying that he echoes the views that I know are prevalent on both sides of the House, particularly with regard to the postponement of the 1968 revaluation, and all that that implied, for the whole decade until 1973, which significantly affected rateable values.
I also agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely about the rigidity of the proposals in the Bill. I know that I speak for many Members on both sides when I say that many of us cherish the independence which the rating system has given to local government in the past. We view proposals such as those contained in the Bill as being contrary to many of the traditions of local government and the hopes that there are for its future.
The Bill carries a grand title—General Rate Bill. It sounds a significant measure in a variety of respects. I always think that the title of a Bill should be explicit and that it should contain in its title some descriptive material. I wonder whether the Government Front Bench will consider perhaps "Rate Abandonment Bill" or "Rate Postponement Bill"—something which would give us an idea of the purpose behind the Bill.
When I told an hon. Lady that this afternoon we were discussing the General Rate Bill, she said, "That is a grand, fine title. What is it all about?" It was not a very rewarding exercise to tell her.
The Bill devalues the rating system. That is inevitable in the proposals. I was interested in the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) made in his criticism of the fact that the rating system this year has been under tremendous pressures, as we all recognise, nobody better than the Under-Secretary of State. But what will happen in subsequent years when the problems we shall face will be even more acute? I think that the rating system is being undermined by the proposals in the Bill.
We all know the work load on the Inland Revenue and the tremendous job that revaluation involves. It was taken as a central Government responsibility from local government in 1948, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see why and what reasons were given in those days for the shift in responsibility. The only worthwhile quotation to be found comes from the Second Reading of the Local Government Bill 1948, when the late Aneurin Bevan said:
Moreover, it is not properly a local government task. It is a professional job."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th November 1947; Vol. 444, c. 996.]
Whether the concept of professionalism of local government has changed is bound to be questioned by that remark. Who is better able to know local values than local valuers? We have seen a transfer. We saw rating valuation nationalised in 1948 and it is right to say that subsequent Socialist administrations have abused the system.
There has been no revaluation for rating purposes during any period under a Socialist administration. There have been three post-war revaluations—in


1956, 1963 and 1973. I recall the circumstances so well when the postponement in 1968 was announced by the late Richard Crossman. Subsequently he confessed in my hearing that it was a political decision—and a wise one at that. I wonder to what extent this decision is a reflection of that political content of the circumstances briefly referred to by my hon. Friend.
The whole rate support grant is dependent upon the calculations of rateable values and it is most unfortunate that we should not be able to retain what little buoyancy there is in the rating system, faced, as we are, with the rigidity for a further three-year period beyond 1978.
The Minister always presents a poor case better than most and is always acceptable in terms of communication, indeed, if not in content. He was more modest when he said that in the House one often does not listen to what one says. I thought that that was personal derogation which was quite unjustified, and certainly does less than justice to himself. It reminded me of the charwoman who, when asked what she thought about a certain problem, said, "How do I know what I think till I heard what I've said?" The right hon. Gentleman was almost on the verge of that relationship in what he said.
It is unfortunate for the rating system that the Government should think it necessary to have a postponement. I remember, during the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill, 1966, that there was considerable discussion on the question whether we ought to have a continuing revaluation—say, over a period of years, a rolling programme of revaluation. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) spoke at length on that during the Committee proceedings and a substantial case was made for a rolling revaluation for rating purposes.
I notice that this point has been taken up by the Association of Council Councils, which says:
With computers available to make quick revisions of valuation lists and accept continuous feed-in of data which will ensure an up-to-date approach to revaluation, there should be continuous revision of the valuation lists in lieu of quinquennial revaluation.

I still think that that requires consideration. It does not arise from our discussions today but it is important enough for our attention to be directed to it. It is academic now.
I do not see the justification for the postponement of revaluation on the grounds suggested by the right hon. Gentleman. A letter sent to the Department over the signatures of the Association of County Councils, the Association of District Councils, and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, has been quoted. There is substantial evidence that the local authority associations are very critical of what is being proposed in the Bill. There is substance in their criticism, and it is not right to say, as the Government have said, that it would be wrong to pre-judge what the Layfield recommendations are likely to be. It is the other way round. The fact that the Government propose to postpone and delay the revaluation is an indication to the Layfield Committee of Government thinking. The two interpretations are there, and it is a question of which one is taken.
The proposals in the Bill are unnecessary and unfortunate because of the short-term devaluing effects they will have on the rating system.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. Stephen Ross: I shall not keep the House very long, because most of the relevant points have already been made.
On first hearing of the Government's intention to postpone the quinquennial valuations from 1978 to 1981 I and most of my colleagues thought it a sensible measure in view of the decision to set up the Layfield Committee to look into the future of the rating system. Moreover—and the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Jones) is in a similar profession to my own—as a chartered surveyor, I am aware that there is a shortage of qualified staff. I met a senior valuation officer the other day who was recalled to my own constituency. He was delighted to come back, for he was paid a handsome salary. I also suspect, as the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) suspected, that one is thinking in terms of further likely burdens that will be put upon my profession, arising from the Government's land proposals and the possibility of a wealth tax.
Incidentally, having read in today's Daily Telegraph that I lost my seat in the last election, I am delighted to know that I may get my job back in the Inland Revenue. But I should be worried if I were to go back to that job now because it would be a difficult task to perform. I have the greatest sympathy with valuation officers in their attempts to assess rateable values or capital values of any sort when there is an absence of transactions in the property market.
This is a further instrusion by central Government into local government affairs. As the hon. Member for Hornsey recalled, the reason the Inland Revenue was given the task of preparing and revising the valuation list way back in 1948 was to ensure, as he said, greater efficiency and also uniformity and regular up-dating. Now we are once more taking the easy way out and making another postponement.
The White Paper on The Future Shape of Local Government Finance, published by the Conservative Government in 1971, said in paragraph 4,
As the White Paper on Local Government, in England said, 'A vigorous local democracy means that authorities must be given real functions—with powers of decision and the ability to take action without being subjected to excessive regulation by central government through financial or other controls'. Any review of financial arrangements must seek to preserve and strengthen the financial responsibility of local government and to minimise detailed intervention by central Departments.
Those words must sound pretty hollow today to the metropolitan county and district councils who have written and made representations.
In the representations made by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities they make the very relevant point, which was not referred to earlier, about the need to keep records. I should like to quote from that, because I should like to have some assurances on this from the Minister when he winds up the debate. They say:
there remains the issue of keeping alive valuation records held by the Inland Revenue so as to secure that if some form of rating is advocated by the Committee of Inquiry.…
—that is, the Layfield Committee—
and accepted by the Government, or indeed is accepted by the Government in the absence of any unanimity as to the Layfield Report",

—I imagine there is a strong risk of that being the case—
there will then be a very serious problem of producing an up-to-date base for rating valuations.
Later, they say, as we all know:
At the present time the Inland Revenue receives full information on a confidential basis of all property transactions including the capital value of the transaction …".
It is important that we have an assurance that this process will continue, as the Layfield Committee may well come out with some sort of recommendation based on capital values, so that the keeping of those records is vitally important.
May I also suggest—I am not trying to make a plug for my professional colleagues—that if there proves to be a severe shortage of professional expertise, some of this work could be farmed out to private practice, much of which is in the doldrums, where there are very good experts.
Of course, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Layfield Committee will support the continuation of industrial and commercial rating, as the hon. Member for Hornsey indicated. I thought the hon. Member got a bit off the point in talking later about shop premises, as those are presumably commercial premises. The small shopkeepers, incidentally, have had a very rough deal and I hope that pressure will be put on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to extend to small shopkeepers some of the relief accorded to domestic ratepayers in relation to increases in the current financial year. Perhaps it could be to those having gross values of £1,000 or less, to guess at a figure. That would be a very great help to them.
I suspect that the Layfield Committee will come down in favour of the abolition of domestic rating, which I agree is in a complete mess. The Minister pointed out one of its contradictions when he referred to the point about central heating. It is also extremely difficult for valuers to assess rateable values when one has rent freezes and the proliferation of various Rent Acts. I always feel very sorry for domestic ratepayers appealing against their assessments in the valuation courts when perhaps the chairman of the court asks, "How much do you think you might let your house for if you let it tomorrow?" It is always a figure far


in excess of the figure he is arguing against. There are a great many anomalies. It would therefore be prudent to continue to process such evidence as there is at present on industrial and commercial transactions to enable accurate assessments to be made when needed.
One of the worst effects of a postponement of this kind is the shock experience by ratepayers when the new assessments are published after a long period. There is also the tendency of local authorities to relax their vigil somewhat—having some false margins to play with, as they seem to feel.
Finally, I should like an assurance from the Minister about the serious outstanding problems arising from the out-of-date assessments of the nationalised industries. These are referred to again in the letter from the various associations to the Permanent Secretary at the Department. There was one section not read out earlier. Perhaps I may read it. The third paragraph reads:
There are very serious outstanding problems as to bringing up to date the rating assessments of the nationalised industries which have been promised for 1975".
It asks what is the position on these.
I have made one or two inquiries, but I am not very well up on this matter. I cannot find out exactly what is the position, because various nationalised industries, as far as I am aware, are assessed on different bases. Perhaps we could have an answer to that during the windup speech.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I had not intended to intervene in any way in this debate. I bow to the much superior knowledge of hon. Members who have taken part in giving expert opinion on the rating system. However, I listened carefully to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government, followed by a torrent of words and simulated indignation on the part of the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi). I am sorry he is not present, because, listening to him, I could not understand what the row was all about and what he was so indignant about in criticising the speech of my right hon. Friend.
The hon. Gentleman characterised the Labour Government—perhaps not directly but by implication—as, being a very wicked Government in daring to bring forward a measure of this kind. The implication behind it was that the Labour Government were doing this because it was connected in some way with a scheme for taking over development land. My right hon. Friend gave him the answer to that. Whether the hon. Gentleman accepted it, I do not know, but it seems to me that there is good reason for my right hon. Friend bringing forward this Bill in this way. Indeed, he stated specifically the reason for doing so.
I do not know what the fuss is all about. Questions have been raised whether the Layfield Committee, in the recommendations it eventually makes, will or will not come down in favour of the abolition of the rating system. We do not know. Perhaps it is a good guess that it may well do something about the rating system. But if it should come down in favour of abolishing the rating system, as at present, all the work done on revaluation would be wasted. Indeed, whatever recommendation the Layfield Committee makes, it surely would be stupid to allow the expense and the work to go forward in revaluation when one might have a recommendation which would make that work completely worthless.
The hon. Member for Hornsey, as I said, spoke by implication of the wicked Labour Government and the way we had postponed measures for revaluation over the years. I wonder why he neglected to mention what Conservative Governments have done in the past and how they have held over revaluations for various reasons.
Accepting what my right hon. Friend said, we have here a simple case. The Layfield Committee is having to consider the matter of rating, including revaluation, local government and the measures relating to it. My right hon. Friend, therefore, comes before the House and says, "Let us not waste time and expense on revaluation at a period when all that work may become quite unnecessary as a result of the recommendations of the Lay-field Committee."
I do not know why hon. Members opposite are so suspicious about this. It seems to me that my right hon. Friend


has presented a perfectly good, sound simple case. Where the argument arises, I do not know. This is a simple, straightforward Bill which ought to receive the approval of the House.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: Let me answer the hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) at once. The reason for the opposition to this Bill is the suspension of the revaluation for as much as five years. If the Layfield Committee reports at an early stage and says that the rating system is to be maintained, there is no earthly reason to postpone the revaluation for five years. Revaluation can be accomplished in a matter of three years, from the start.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Gordon Oakes): I hate to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman so early in his speech. The Bill proposes that the revaluation be in 1981, rather than 1978. Initially it would be for three years. I know that there is provision for extra years, but it is envisaged for three, not five, years.

Mr. Page: My arithmetic was wrong. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. It is for an extension of three years. I say that three years is not necessary.

Mr. Weitzman: What would the right hon. Gentleman's Government have done if they had been returned? My guess is that they would have done exactly the same thing.

Mr. Page: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will be patient for a moment, I will make my own speech, if I may. I answered his question at the beginning.
We are all painfully aware of the results of the previous revaluation. The increase in rental values and, therefore, rateable values of property after 10 years was so great that the public were shocked by the rise in their rateable values. If we still have a rating system in 1981—and I say that deliberately—I am sure there will be the same sort of shock to the public after a delay of so long between revaluations.
If the Bill were coupled with a Government assurance that household rates would be abolished, I should offer no opposition at all to the Bill, because we are merely saying to the valuers, "Do not

start off with it; we are going to abolish this system". I should not object to that. The trouble is that the Bill is coupled with too many statements from the Government banches in praise of the rating system. Therefore, we must deal with the Bill on the basis that the present Government, at any rate, are thinking along the lines of retaining the rating system.
The Minister cannot blame us for being suspicious about the employment of valuers. Last time the revaluation was postponed because of a land grab and a tax. It was on the occasion of the Land Commission and the betterment levy. This time it comes just before the right hon. Gentleman introduces his Bill on land municipalisation.

Mr. John Silkin: The right hon. Gentleman and I know one another well enough to be perfectly frank. When the late Richard Crossman introduced the previous postponement, he gave the reason. He said that we would need valuers for this work. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope he will take it from me—this is now the fourth time that I have said it—that it is Layfield inquiry, and that alone, that causes the postponement.

Mr. Page: If the right hon. Gentleman will pause to reflect for a moment, I was complaining that he has not been entirely frank with the House. During the Conservative Government, in which I had the honour to serve, we shifted valuers from the Inland Revenue to local authorities, and gave greater authority to the local authorities to employ their own valuers. There is a shift—if it has continued during the past nine months or so—from the Inland Revenue to local authorities.
The right hon. Gentleman's plan for land nationalisation is land municipalisation. I imagine that it will be the local authority valuers who will value the current use value, and so on. That is the reason—and I wish he had explained that to the House a little earlier—that he is saying, "This is not because of the employment of valuers; in fact we shall employ local authority valuers to do the valuations. The delay is only on the basis of Layfield."

Mr. Stephen Ross: I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that there is a general shortage of valuers, and I


should imagine that some of these municipal valuers will come out of the Inland Revenue.

Mr. Page: That was what I was saying. We have been shifting them from the Inland Revenue into local authorities. I am a little doubtful about what the Land Tribunal will do about this. I think that there will be more appeals if the local authority valuer is valuing on current use value than if the Inland Revenue are doing so. However, this is a subject we can come back to on the Land Bill when the right hon. Gentleman presents it.
It is, therefore, only Layfield. Hon. Members have already said how unfair a delay in revaluation can be as between one tenant and another, and we have proved on the recent occasion how unfair it can be between one local authority and another. As the House knows, the resources element in the rate support grant is distributed on the basis of the total rateable value of the rating authority. We set a standard rateable value below which the local authority receives its share of the resources element.
If the Bill is passed through the House and there is this further delay of three years in revaluation, there will be an imbalance between local authorities, as there was after 10 years. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to revise the rate support grant formula so far as the resources element is concerned, or to balance it with some juggling—if I may put it that way—with the domestic element, because this will need to be looked at very carefully? Once we get into 1978 to 1981, there will again be a grave imbalance between the towns.
Let us assume for a moment that a rating system will still be in operation in 1981. Upon what basis will property be valued? If the Government have their way and carry out the declarations that will be made on their behalf during the progress of the Housing Rents and Subsidies Bill, there will be no private property left. There will be only council property. That was the purport, as I understood it, of the Minister's statements. If there are to be only owner-occupiers and council tenants in future, how on earth do we find a rental market on which these valuers can work? The idea of

valuation on a rental basis is getting more and more remote, and this applies particularly to residential property.
What about commercial property? If the right hon. Gentleman has his way with land municipalisation there will be no commercial property available for development. It will all be developed about 10 years hence, if at all. At any rate, there will be no market for the development of industrial and commercial property and, therefore, no market value. It is setting the valuers an impossible task for valuation, and that is why this Bill may be completely frustrating.
I come back to what I said at the beginning. I should have no objection if the Bill really were related to Layfield. I should relate it in this way: give Lay-field another year to report and then, if he still reports that there should be a rating system, allow three years on top of that for the process to be carried out. I do not think it needs longer than that. That means only one year's extension.
I hope that my Front Bench will fight the Bill on the basis that it should be just a year's extension of the revaluation and no more. That would be taking Layfield into account and carrying out exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has said he wants to do. I hope he will consider that and commend it to the House.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. Bruce Grocott: I am sure that during its history this House has had some strange suggestions made to it, and the one I have just heard—that an hon. Member would be happy to support a Bill which postponed the revaluation of property provided it also included a clause to abolish the rating system—is strange indeed. I see little point in postponing the revaluation of property if there is a subsection to abolish the rating system.
After listening to the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi), I am surprised at the extent to which a measure such as this—on the face of it an innocuous measure—is capable of raising blood pressure and temperature. I happen to believe that one of the reasons why the Opposition are getting so upset about this measure is that they can remember the effect in 1973 when revaluation was


pushed through and continued, despite tremendous opposition from ratepayers. Let us make no mistake about it: the effect of the last revaluation was to shift the rate burden to domestic ratepayers and away from commercial and industrial property. That decision to carry on with the revaluation, coupled with the appalling Act to reform local government—from which no one knows how, why or what benefits are to be received—heralded the start of much of the feeling of domestic ratepayers today about the rate burden.

Mr. Douglas Hurd (Mid-Oxon): One of the difficulties of the 1973 revaluation was precisely that it came 10 years after the previous one, and that it came after the last postponement by the previous Labour Government.

Mr. Grocott: Yes, and it came at a time when we all knew that local government reform was about to be undertaken. I remember only too well—at the time I was chairman of the local authority finance committee—the look of shock among my officials when they ushered me into their presence to explain to me the effect of revaluation on the domestic ratepayer. They were stunned by it. I also remember a meeting in Worcestershire of finance committee chairmen—hon. Members are aware that Worcestershire is many things, but it is not a hotbed of Socialism, and I was the only Labour member there—and their indignation and pleas to the Government.
I remind hon. Members that revaluation does not always have the effect of making matters fairer, as some people are suggesting, but often transfers the burden to the people least able to pay. It was often the smaller properties, the poorer properties, council houses, and so on, which had real problems after the last revaluation.
I hope that my view of the rating system will not be interpreted as meaning that the rating system should be retained for all time. Hon. Members have been fond of quoting the late Richard Crossman today. I remember his saying that the rating system was a relic of the first Elizabethan era that should never have been allowed to survive to the second. I happen to think that that is a fairly good description of the Conservative Party but it was used by

Richard Crossman to describe the rating system, and I hope that we shall see a considerable reorganisation of local government finance.
But we must remember the effect of the last Act. There is, possibly, a certain amount of egg on the faces of the Opposition, as they will realise if they sit back and think of the origin of the present outcry among ratepayers. It dates back to their Government, to their activities and particularly to their Local Government Act.

5.49 p.m.

Mr. Tony Durant: I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments in this short debate. Most of the points have been made, so I shall cut my speech as much as possible.
I begin by commenting on what the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Grocott) has said. He knocked his argument down by saying that when he had been ushered in to see his officials he had found them horror-struck by the sudden rise in rates. That was the effect of delaying the implementation of the earlier proposal. By citing that incident the hon. Gentleman knocked his own proposal on its head.
I share the slight suspicion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) of this whole matter. We have had several reassurances from the Dispatch Box that there is no need to fear that the Bill is connected with any other measure. We are assured that it is related only to the Layfield Committee's report. One must accept that, but there is a lingering suspicion that that may not be the case.
Following what my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby said about the rate support grant. I should like to make a plea that when the matter is discussed the Secretary of State should consider the district councils and not pass on any relief only to the county councils, because this particularly affects my constituency. I support very much the suggestion that a year's extension might have been a viable idea, but this will obviously not be accepted.
The hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) asked what all the fuss was about. Has he not been listening to


what ratepayers throughout the country have been saying? There is a tremendous uproar about rates. This is another seemingly small measure which confuses and worries people. There is, therefore, a fuss and worry about rates. The public, councils and officials are worried about local government finance. That is why we are having this debate and why there is strength of feeling about it.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) covered a great deal of what I intended to say. I am pleased to see that he has been re-elected since the statement in this morning's early newspapers. The hon. Gentleman is not here to be congratulated. I want to deal with the matter he raised concerning small shopkeepers. This is a matter of some urgency. In my constituency the number of shop closures is alarming, and we shall have vast tracts of the area without any small traders such as newsagents, cobblers or any other type of trader. This is a serious matter.
It is a pity that the Secretary of State has said that the Layfield Committee is the reason for the postponement. What happens if the Layfield Committee, in spite of everything, says that rates must continue? All that would happen is that we would then have a scramble to achieve another valuation. Why cannot the valuation go on while the Layfield Committee is meeting so that, if it says that rates must continue, we are in a position to have that revaluation? There is no doubt that a postponement would distort the problem of rates, as many hon. Members have said, and would make the whole rating position even worse.
I should like to pick up the point that has been made by a number of hon. Members about the Green Paper. I admit that I support those hon. Members in much of what they said. I was involved in a local reorganisation committee and received a copy of the famous Green Paper. That document was a farce because it put up ideas and merely knocked them down. It was a great pity that more was not done at that stage.
The hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) talked about Conservative policy at the last election and said that all we would do was shift the burden on to the general taxpayer. I do not think he read it properly, because it

stated that we would look at other ways, bearing in mind the report of the Lay-field Committee, to make the local rate system fairer and based on ability to pay. Everyone feels that the injustice is that the present system is not based on ability to pay.
The situation is very serious and we as Members of Parliament are all under pressure. Why cannot the committee report much earlier? I cannot see that it will take all this time. There is so much documentation and so much evidence that the committee simply has to sit down, make a few decisions and put those decisions to us. To take all this time to report is a lot of nonsense. If the chaps do not have sufficient time, let us get some people who have the time, because the matter is very serious and urgent.
I hope that the Layfield Committee will consider valuation as a basis. It has been mentioned already that the basis of valuation should also be considered by that committee if it decides to continue with general rating. I hope the committee will also look at the question of site valuation. I have mixed views on the matter. I am not necessarily a supporter of it merely because I have raised the subject, but I hope that it will be considered by the Layfield Committee.
Rates are still going up and up. We have heard about next year's problems in this respect. My own local authority speaks of the possibility of a 40 per cent. increase. This will mean an increase of 120 per cent. over a period of three years. It is a frightening thought for local ratepayers. There is no question but that there will be trouble on this front next year.
I shall, therefore, have to accept what the Minister said. He chided me once for not listening to the answer when I asked him a question. I have listened very carefully and absorbed what he said. I therefore take it at its face value that this is not sharp gerrymandering, because the official is to be used for some other purpose.
There was some confusion in the dialogue across the Table as to whether we were short of people. I draw the Minister's attention to the effect of the Bill on public service manpower, which is mentioned on the front. It states that


there is a shortage, and that the valuation office is
unable to recruit professional valuers to the level of its manpower requirement.
In other words, there is anxiety about the professionals. Nevertheless I was not too clear about the friendly dialogue which took place, so I missed the outcome of it.
I shall, therefore, support the Bill in the sense that we shall not divide on it tonight, but I have grave anxieties, and I hope that the Minister will take note of this.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. John Cartwright: In company with my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) I have considerable reservations about the effect of the Bill, and some doubts about the practical problems which it raises. I speak on behalf of the metropolitan areas of the country. It is an indication of the importance of this issue for local government that it has succeeded in uniting the shire counties, the districts and the metropolitan areas as well. Not many issues bring those three parts of local government on to the same wavelength.
The first issue which concerns local government in this problem is the absence of consultation before the intentions of the Government were made known. When the local authority associations took this matter up with the Department they were told that this was an executive act of Government and, therefore, not something subject to consultation. But this was, after all, a basic and independent source of finance given by Parliament to local government and, therefore, an issue on which local government ought to have been consulted before decisions were taken. It seems a cavalier way in which to treat local government.
This is important because on both sides of local government there is a growing feeling that successive Ministers make a lot of fancy speeches about respecting the integrity of local government, safeguarding its rôle and believing in its importance, but these executive acts of Government are taken without any consultation with the local authorities concerned.
My right hon. Friend has indicated that the whole basis, reason and purpose of

this Bill is that to continue with the revaluation would be to prejudge Lay-field. As a newcomer to the House, I find it a fairly novel doctrine that, whenever one sets up a Royal Commission or a high-powered committee of inquiry one has to stop all the ongoing commitments under existing legislation on the ground that to do otherwise might prejudice the results of the inquiry. I should have thought that a recipe for a rather chaotic situation. I join with other hon. Members who say that a better case could be made out for the decision to postpone the revaluation, prejudging what one expects from the Layfield Committee.
Unlike the hon. Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant) I do not think that the Layfield Committee has an easy job. If I may declare my interest, for a few weeks earlier this year I was a member of that committee, before the electors of Woolwich, East called me to higher things. I think it has a difficult job to do in finding some means of financing local government so as to give local authorities a buoyant, rising, lively source of finance which, at the same time, is under local control and does not place a heavy burden on the domestic ratepayer. I do not think that it will be easy to reconcile those requirements.
Perhaps Layfield will eventually say that the rating system has to be scrapped, and some of us might be happy about that outcome. It might say that it should be reformed, or that the rating system should be retained in part and supplemented by other forms of local government finance. Layfield might come out in favour of a capital value based rating system. If a number of these possibilities come up, there will be a need for some up-to-date guide to property values.
I note the point which has been made by a number of hon. Members that there is a grave risk of a gap in information if the next revaluation does not come into force till 1981. There is a risk—my right hon. Friend fairly recognises this in his opening speech—of distortion and inequity, not just between one ratepayer and another but between one local authority and another. There is the growing impact of inflation. We are all aware of its impact on local authorities, labour-intensive concerns as they are. We know


also that the rating system at the moment gives a fixed base for local government income. It is not a buoyant situation, and this has been argued in the past on behalf of local government as a case for more, not less, frequent revaluation. In circumstances such as the boom in property prices which we saw in the early 1970s, the situation can change rapidly.
That is why I share the view of the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), that if the revaluation is postponed, at least we should maintain the information to which he referred, on property transactions, details of value and so on, so that there will be some basis of fact if we need it to put into a valuation system again very swiftly.
One point which has not yet been mentioned in the debate is the impact of the valuation system on the rate support grant. It is of fairly substantial importance to the allocation of the resources and the domestic elements in the rate support grant. The third report of the Department of the Environment Grants Working Party, referring to the London situation, states:
Most members consider that London's exceptional rateable resources outweigh London's exceptional spending needs.
I do not agree with that conclusion, but it indicates the extent to which rateable value is used in these decisions. I believe that rateable value is an unfair test of the resources of any local authority. If we are to operate on out-of-date rateable value statistics, it becomes an even less fair test of the allocation of resources under the rate support grant.
I recognise that my right hon. Friends face considerable difficulties in this matter. I think that we all recognise, with good reason, that rates are a very unpopular form of tax. I recognise that a revaluation is still more unpopular when the ratepayer suddenly sees the rateable value of his property soaring at a rapid rate. Indeed, we have not yet sorted out all the appeals from the last revaluation. I also recognise that the Layfield Committee presented a new situation to which the Government had to respond, but I honestly feel that my right hon. Friends could have dealt with the matter with rather less cavalier disregard for the views of local authority associations, with more understanding of the problems now facing local government, and with more con-

sideration of the not very high state of morale which now exists in local government.

6.2 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Hurd (Mid-Oxon): I do not want to follow the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) on the point about consultation, which he emphasised, although he put forward a convincing argument.
In moving the Second Reading of the Bill the Minister for Planning and Local Government, in solemn terms, told us of the timetable set out by the Government for the Layfield Committee's work. I think that by now we all accept that that timetable is the justification and the reason for the Bill. However, what worries us most is the thought that the timetable and the Government's action on it is an inadequate response to the present crisis. It surprised me, as a new Member last February, that this should be so. Heaven knows, in the last Parliament we tried again and again, afternoon by afternoon and evening by evening, to ram home the point that something new and serious was happening in local government, but the response from Ministers was inadequate. They will live to recognise and regret that fact.
I am not now thinking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's domestic rate relief. Now is not the time to discuss that. I am thinking of the Layfield Committee and its timetable. The Minister repeated today that the timetable asks this distinguished body to report at the end of next year. That means that we have at least two or perhaps three more years of the present rating system operating under the worst possible conditions. It would clearly be impossible, if the Government do not get the report till the end of next year, to bring in legislation before the summer of 1976. It would also clearly be impossible for that legislation to have any effect till the financial year 1977–78. Therefore, we would have at least two years—I suggest possibly three years—of the present system operating under impossible conditions. I hope the Government will note that, from my admittedly brief experience in this matter, I feel that the system will not survive for long.
Oxfordshire is far from the worst affected. It must be about in the middle. The


figures that I am about to quote will be greater for other counties. Oxfordshire County Council set aside £6 million to cover inflation this year, but it expects to overspend by £2½ million. That is after making modest allowance for the Houghton Report on teachers' pay and for the manual workers' settlement, neither of which is yet known. Its committed growth on existing programmes is 4½ per cent. On top of that is the increase in population and whatever calculation is made for inflation next year. Adding these things together—that is what we are beginning to do in a very painful way—we find the certainty of cuts in local government services and another round next year of high rate increases. Already there are angry protest meetings about the cuts. If that process is repeated next year and the year after, and possibly the year after that, before anything that the Layfield Committee may recommend can have any effect, we shall move very quickly into an intolerable situation.
One difference between this coming year and the current year is that, whereas the Secretary of State managed to manoeuvre the figures so that the cities were to some extent protected in the current year—one had the impression from time to time that we were regarded as a lot of hayseeds and that these ructions in the far east were greatly exaggerated by the Liberal and Conservative parties—in this corning year London and the big cities will be affected in a major way. I think that that will affect the attendance at and speeches in this House from the Government side.
The basic reasons why the system is becoming unacceptable are simple. Whatever the theoretical arguments about the rating system, at a time of high inflation it rapidly becomes unacceptable because it does not provide local authorities with greater incomes as costs and salaries rise, it is not automatically buoyant, and it is not related to the ability of people to pay. Listening to ratepayers one gets the impression that they feel that the system as it operates now offends a basic sense of natural justice. That was the phrase used by the Secretary of State yesterday, and that was the phrase that was used in opposition to our Housing Finance Act.
Before we get into real trouble next year the Secretary of State ought to consider

what kind of collision might conceivably occur between those who now represent ratepayers in numerous associations, local government and central Government. The situation is a good deal more serious than the debate so far has indicated. The Government ought at least to have some kind of emergency and contingency plans.
Would it not be possible—I put this forward as a serious suggestion—to say to the Layfield Committee "We still desperately need your advice. Because inflation is going so strong, the situation is now more urgent than we originally thought. The evidence is here. We have in the Department, in that curious palace in Marshall Street, piles of it assembled for the Green Paper prepared by the Conservative Government. It needs updating. However, the evidence and the choice are there. Will you look at it and let us have your views on the radical changes which are needed by the end of this year? Then we can produce legislation by 1975? "If that could be done I think that there would be a chance of rescuing the situation. If the Government do not do that, I feel that the Layfield Committee, before it reaches the end of its leisurely deliberations, may find that it is not examining an invalid but is conducting a post mortem on a corpse.

6.9 p.m.

Mr. Frank Hatton: The Bill makes sense only if it is accepted that there is a need to get local government finance once and for all on a sound and sensible basis. If that is accepted, the postponement of revaluation is understandable.
Local government is going through one of its most difficult periods ever. It has been living through severe inflation. One of its gravest difficulties at present is coping with the reorganisation put into effect by the previous Conservative Government. Ratepayers are now finding themselves having to make considerably increased payments but at the same time they are being provided with reduced services because of the high costs of administration placed on local government by that reorganisation.
I want briefly to highlight one aspect of the situation. It is an aspect which troubles me greatly in relation to a postponement of revaluation. I speak of


the difficulties that exist because of the formulae that are applied to the determination of rateable values of flats and houses, where we have a situation in which flats tend to be rated more highly than private houses because the notional rent is normally considered to be higher.
This is one of the severe anomalies of the present time. It arouses anger among ratepayers about the amount paid by one ratepayer as against another. This can be highlighted particularly in inner city areas, where there has been much in-filling by new housing developments of multi-storey flats and other types of flat development. Some of this development has been undertaken by bodies such as housing associations to assist those who have been unable to find housing through the housing lists of local authorities. They have found themselves with a severe rating assessment which has compared very unfavourably with that of those who live in adjacent houses. In my constituency I have an example of a housing association development in which two-bedroomed accommodation has a rateable value of £266 although adjacent to it are detached houses with a garage—much more desirable residences—with rateable values of £247 and £236.
I regret that the postponement that we are to suffer because of the Bill will mean that residents in accommodation of that kind will continue to feel that they are being punished because of the type of development in which they find themselves. Nevertheless I accept, as I have said, that if we are to have local government finance on a sound basis once and for all, a Bill of this kind, in view of the Layfield Committee's determination, ought to be accepted. There is an urgent need for the committee to report as speedily as possible. Indeed, I hope that the Government will do everything in their power to facilitate the committee's work.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Timothy Sainsbury: It is unusual to have a debate in which so many hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed reservations, in some cases very considerable reservations, about the Bill. I am glad to be able to follow up the remarks of the hon. Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Mr. Hatton), who has put forward some of

the reservations, doubts and worries which we all share.
I have looked at the Bill to see whether we could find anything to commend in it. Happily, I am able to find at least two points. The first is its brevity and comprehension. Even those of us who are not possessed of special legal qualifications find it fairly comprehensible.
There is one other point that I find possibly good about the Bill. In this connection I should, perhaps, declare an interest of a kind since I was at one time a part-time member of what was known as the Business Team in the Civil Service Department. While I was so employed I wrote several reports, in one of which I touched upon what seemed to me to be an anomaly—which is known as the Rating of Government Property Department. It is a very small sub-department indeed.
It seems to me to be an anomaly in several ways. First, I do not think that it represents an efficient and effective deployment of what we have all agreed is a rather scarce resource—namely, professional valuers. Second, a long-standing subject of resentment by local authorities of all types is that they do not have Government property in their areas rated on the same basis as other property and rated by the people responsible for rating all other sorts of property. Perhaps the pause that the Bill unhappily gives us could be turned to good effect if that matter at least was looked at and if this long-standing anomaly could be put right.
Turning to the general subject, however, I believe that we must consider it against what is in effect an outcry about rates. It comes from all areas of the country and from occupants of all types of property. I recognise, as the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) said, that we are not looking at the Bill as though in some mysterious way revaluation would increase the buoyancy of the rating revenue. The argument is not about the buoyancy of the rate revenue. The argument surely ought to be about the acceptability of the method of raising this revenue and the equity between individuals and, indeed, between companies from whom that revenue is raised.
An important point that has not been touched on very much during the debate


is that this matter affects companies and businesses just as much as it affects individuals. The plight of the small shopkeeper has been mentioned. I support what has been said by hon. Members who have mentioned that problem. But the whole of commerce and industry now has a greatly increased rate burden. It is becoming a major cost factor, for example, in retailing. The Minister has admitted that property values change. Perhaps it is true to say that in commerce and industry they change rather more rapidly and radically than they do in other areas.
I am sure that the Minister and his advisers will be familiar with the history of the excess allowance. That allowance used to be claimed by those operating large retail stores, on the argument, then felt to be generally acceptable, that the excess area over a normal-size retail unit was not worth the same amount pro rata as the standard-size unit with an ordinary amount of high street frontage. For a long time certain larger stores paid less rates pro rata than did the smaller ones. It now seems that we may be moving into a situation in which exactly the reverse will apply.
Therefore, if one postpones a revaluation for as long as is suggested by the Bill, the inequities are bound to increase. We must bear in mind that the values on which rates are now paid are not those of 1973 but are assessments made during the course of 1970, 1971 and 1972, which in many cases are subject to appeals, many of which are still outstanding. The balance of the rate burden between offices and shops, which had quite clearly got out of line between 1963 and 1973, is likely to get out of line again.
But perhaps quite rightly most of us who have contributed to the debate have been concerned about individuals. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant) said, the problem is that rates are a tax that is levied without regard to the individual ratepayer's ability to pay that tax. Perhaps while the rate burden on any one individual was not substantial that did not matter too) much. Even though the amount was not substantial, the system could not be called particularly fair. The point has already been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) that it is the very rapid increase

in the rate burden that has concentrated all our minds on the inequity of this taxation on individuals, and particularly on single-person households.
I have in my constituency no fewer than 12,000 single-person households and nearly every one of these can be held to be subject to an unfair burden by reason of the method of levying rates. Again, the longer the period between valuation, the more difficult it is to get the balance right between houses and flats. Changes in the environment of houses and flats will change their relative values. It is possible that people will quite correctly pay greater attention, and therefore attach greater value, to the ease of heating a property as the years go by, and this could have a significant effect on relative values. The longer the postponement, the greater the potential inequity.
Another aspect is that the unfortunate valuers, in short supply as we all know, have to deal with a large number of large-scale alterations and new buildings. The further they get away from the base date for the valuation, the more difficult it will be for them, for ratepayers and for their professional advisers to interpret what is known as the tone of the list and to try to scale down the current values to the original value from the time the rating list was first prepared.
There therefore exists inequity between firms and individual householders. There is potential inequity between householders as a group and commerce and industry as an organisation. It is continuing inflation, which even the most optimistic of speakers today has not expected to disappear overnight, the growth in the responsibilities of local government imposed on it by the central Government, and, therefore, the inevitable growth in the spending of local government that bring this matter to a state of increasing urgency. A tax which is unfair and which is getting higher and higher eventually becomes a tax which is unacceptable.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd), who said that we need a much more urgent approach to this unacceptable situation, otherwise the ratepayers will no longer pay up, not only because the burden upon them is excessive but because it is raised in an unfair


way. The Bill does nothing to ease that problem.
The Government's whole approach seems too little and too lazy. We need something altogether more urgent. We need immediate attention to the burdens on ratepayers, domestic ratepayers particularly, for the coming financial year. Surely we could have a speedier report from the Layfield Committee, particularly in view of all the work that has already been done. Why must we wait until the end of 1975 at the earliest? May we have more than just the Bill? It does not do much to help but it does not make the situation much worse. May we have immediate action? If we do not, there will be serious problems in the next rates season.

6.24 p.m.

Mr. Ted Leadbitter: It is interesting to hear an hon. Member introducing a note of urgency in a matter which has taxed the House for many years. The hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) wants urgency injected into the matter. If he is sincere he could show that sincerity by contacting the Conservative Members of the Committee and asking them to make their contribution.
It is a matter of conjecture and not of certainty whether postponement of the revaluation will bring advantages or disadvantages, but the Second Reading of the Bill gives the House an opportunity to say something pertinent about its own responsibilities for the consequences of local government reorganisation. Once and for all we must stop tinkering about with local government and leaving local councillors to stew in their own juice, particularly when they have heaped upon them the ire and discontent of their constituents.
Local government has passed through a traumatic experience since the passing of the reorganisation legislation. The councillors have been malinged because the public, understandably, cannot see where the cause of the trouble originates. The right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), who did so much to pilot that legislation through the House, knows full well that he and his Government were warned repeatedly that there was no correlation between the size of local authori-

ties and efficiency. One general guideline is that the larger the local authority the higher are the unit costs of servicing. I can remember putting before the right hon. Gentleman comparative figures in connection with my plea for Hartlepool and Cleveland against those of other authorities at county level.
Much of the general chaos in local government and many of the high costs and the difficulties which exist between the authorities and the people they represent originate in this House. In the past we have been too much involved with the presumption that all we have to do is pass legislation and then pass the buck to the local authority.
The Government have acted very quickly since they came to office last March. I hope that they will accept the concern which now exists as I have described it. They have set off in the right direction. On coming into office they gave immediate relief to some authorities. They introduced an improved rate rebate scheme and they set about organising the independent inquiry. They did other things to help, and my hon. Friend the Minister met many local authorities and travelled widely to assess for himself the position which had developed.
There are many calls from hon. Members for getting rid of the rating system, but just how sincere are they? Last November the right hon. Member for Crosby said that it would be irresponsible for rates to be put into the melting pot. That was only two months before publication of the White Paper on the rate support grant in January this year. The right hon. and learned Member for Hex-ham (Mr. Rippon) went further. He showed his complete faith in the correctness of the rating system by announcing that the money was simple to collect and the system was easy to administer and that therefore it was right. All this was swept aside at the election by the Conservative plea that we should get rid of the present system of rating.
I have got news for anyone who listens to that kind of talk. For years and years there have been study groups, working parties, and various responsible bodies in local authorities all intent on modifying or getting rid of the rating system. God knows how many White Papers there have been on local government financial


structure, but they have all ended up with one basic conclusion—that the rating system has to stay.
Those of us with local government experience know that there must be an element of a rating system if we want to have freedom in local government. We cannot have a democratic situation in which people have the right to a close, personal contact with local government councillors and officials unless there is some financial responsibility at that level.
We on this side of the House are intent on reforming and reshaping, whereas any pretence from the Conservative Party that it wants to get rid of the rating system is in complete conflict with that party's other claim that it believes in freedom in local government. The Conservatives cannot have their cake and eat it.

Mr. Graham Page: There is greater responsibility by the local authority to its electors if all the electors pay for the finance for the local authority, and pay it at a rate settled by their local authority —in short, local income tax.

Mr. Leadbitter: The right hon. Gentleman may feel that he has a reasonable point, but he had all the opportunity to take action on that when he was in office, but he had to wait until he was out of office before trying to help, with his Bill for a national lottery. He came to the House with that Bill after he left office, not with his present suggestion.
I say to my colleagues on the Government Front Bench that I believe that they have started out quickly and pertinently to clear up the mess created by the Conservatives when in office. I ask my colleagues to go a little further and take on board total parliamentary and Government responsibility for this matter and to say to the general public that councillors are not responsible for the present situation.
It is the current thing to have a social contract. Let us, therefore, have a new contract with local government, and say that we shall tell the people exactly about the extent to which we are going to be responsible in the future. So as to aid the achievement of that situation we should arrange for local authorities to tell us much more about their capital works proposals, their servicing and costs. We

can then have a new relationship in which we can get rid of all the grave anxiety now existing among electors and ratepayers, by making Parliament's views and conclusions fully known.
I hope that the Bill will be accepted upon the basis that was announced earlier in the House. I hope also that the House will be satisfied that, having time to deal with revaluation, we shall use that time to clear the decks and enable the public to understand where the troubles lie in local government.

6.33 p.m.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) have put the case against the Bill very well.
My constituents are deeply worried already about the tremendous rate burden that they have to bear. They had been greatly looking forward to the return of a Conservative Government pledged to reduce the domestic rate burden immediately by one-quarter by removing from local government the cost of teachers' salaries and the costs of the fire and police services and then completely recasting the domestic rate system, thus making the burden much fairer as between one citizen and another.
Instead of such relief, my constituents are now getting this Bill sprung upon them at short notice. It was not mentioned at the time of the General Election or in the Queen's Speech. It is a Bill which will intensify the unfairness in the present rating and valuation system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) and I put forward a Private Member's Bill in the last Parliament to try to eliminate some of the factors in the valuation system which cause the greatest resentment among householders. Unfortunately, like many other Bills, it fell because of the General Election.
Now we have what I can only describe as this most miserable Bill. I have been extremely interested about how often hon. Members on the Government side have used the phrase "on the face of it" when speaking about the Bill. The trouble with the Bill is that we cannot take it at face value. Never before have I heard anyone


whom I would normally regard as an intelligent Member put forward such an idiotic reason for not consulting local authority associations as did the Minister in opening the debate. If he had tried that argument on a trade union he would have had a riot on his hands, if not a lynching party.
There should have been proper consultations before the introduction of the Bill. Partly because of the lack of consultation, partly because of the haste and partly because of what has been properly referred to as political gerrymandering, the Bill will only increase the unfairness between one ratepayer and another. Some properties rise in value while some fall, but their valuations remain for two, three, four or even five years.
The Minister would have done much better had he used his not inconsiderable energy to reduce the burden of rates and to get rid of the injustice of charging householders for services which they do not receive by withdrawing the statutory instrument, introduced by the Secretary of State for the Environment in March, which obliges local authorities to levy rates for sewerage services on all properties regardless of whether they have those services.
I have in my constituency 3,000 properties which do not receive sewerage services. I urge the Minister yet again to get the occupiers of such properties exempted immediately from the rate charges for sewerage services.
I am totally opposed to the Bill. We shall do all in our power to get it mightily improved in Committee.

6.36 p.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: I did not intend to join in the debate but I have been stung to do so by some of the remarks from the Government side of the House. The hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Grocott) said that it was an innocuous Bill, and the hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) said he did not know what all the fuss was about. The general consensus on the Government benches has been feigned astonishment that we on this side of the House should take objection to the Bill.
I believe that there are three causes for concern. It is right that I should put these matters to hon. Members on the Government side. First, this year's rate increases have been absolutely appalling in my constituency. There have been increases ranging from 40 per cent. to 100 per cent. Just how bad the position has become is illustrated in a letter I have received from a constituent. The letter states:
You will have had many letters from this area commenting on the enormous increases in the rates demanded from 1st April 1974—my own are up from £61·92 per annum to £102·18, which makes the free French letters and 1 p off milk and bread not such a good bargain.
I'm too old for the first item and too fat for the other two.
The good humour of Burton people should not obscure their real anguish.
In my constituency the rate increases have caused widespread alarm. There are many reasons for these appalling increases. One reason arises from local government reorganisation which took place at the behest of the House before, I am happy to say, I became a Member of it.
Another reason is inflation, and we can all put forward various factors explaining that. A further reason is a reduction from 19p to 13p in the rate support grant in my area as a political measure by the Government when they took office in February, and yet another reason is some increase in expenditure by the Labour-controlled county council.
I put forward yet another reason—revaluation, which is what we are talking about today. Revaluation was delayed by up to 10 years by the last Labour Government. That so distorted the valuations of many houses in my constituency that whereas they would have been meeting rate increases of 60 or 70 per cent., in the end they had to meet rate increases of over 100 per cent.
Therefore, we do not regard the Bill as innocuous. We believe that we should make a fuss on it because it is extremely worrying to any hon. Member who is concerned about the distress caused to his constituents. That is my first cause for concern.
My second cause for concern relates to the Government's statements on whether the rate system is to remain with


us. I wish to draw attention to some remarks by the Secretary of State for the Environment in February, when he said:
At a time of high taxation, taxation should be higher under a Labour Government if we are to carry out our social programme. We shall never find another source of as much money as accrues through the rating system.
That statement, coupled with the total failure of Labour to put into its manifesto any suggestion on the lines of the Conservative proposal to abolish the rating system, gives one cause to think that the Labour Government take the view that either the Layfield Committee is likely to report that the rating system should remain or the rating system will remain whatever Layfield and his committee say. That means that the distortions will continue. If that happens, it will cause even more distress to my constituents. That is my second reason for concern.
If the Government were to say that there should be no rating by the end of a Parliament, I see a reason for introducing the Bill at this stage. As things are, however, there certainly seems to be no reason for delaying the measure until 1981. We know that the Layfield Committee will be reporting in 18 months or so, but that by this Bill there will be no implementation of revaluation before 1981. My right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) said that there was no point in waiting until 1981 for revaluation because there would be no market for domestic rented accommodation or commercial property on which any revaluation could take place. I agree.
My third cause for concern relates to what the Minister for Planning and Local Government said about the reason for delay. He recalled the reason given by Mr. Richard Crossman for the last rating revaluation postponement, namely, shortage of valuers. I am a relatively new Member of the House and am inclined to accept what parliamentary figures say in the House of Commons. Therefore, when the Minister goes on to say that the reason for delay in rating matters was the existence of the Layfield Committee, again I tend to accept what he says.
But one's confidence in the reasons given for the delay by Socialist Cabinet Ministers is undermined when we know the reason given in a television interview on 18th February 1963 by Mr. Crossman.

The reason had nothing to do with the shortage of valuers. Mr. Crossman said:
I being a cynical politician said 'This is something we can well postpone. We can do nothing but lose votes on this and the rates will go up.' 
If that is what Mr. Crossman said when being frank, I must be forgiven when I hear yet another reason given for delay by a Minister in the House—especially since we know that the Bill is being introduced a short time after the election, during which Labour politicians no doubt assured their supporters that they would do something about the rates. They therefore proposed to postpone any reassessment which might increase the rates.
Those are my reasons for taking part in the debate. It is right that we should make a fuss about this so-called innocuous measure. It is our duty as an Opposition to speak out against such measures. It is a measure in which I can see no good and I believe that in the longer term it may do much harm.

6.46 p.m.

Mr. Hal Miller: I apologise for not being present during the earlier speeches, and I am grateful for this opportunity to talk on the important topic of rates.
I begin by congratulating the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for Planning and Local Government. I well recall the assiduity with which he listened to an Adjournment debate which I was fortunate enough to initiate in the House concerning the financial situation which local authorities faced following the designation of new towns. That matter is still in the forefront of the minds of the Hereford and Worcester County Council. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some hope that action will be taken to help us.
I shall not detain the House with a large number of general points and shall not try to make party political points. I wish to emphasise the fact that the burden on the domestic ratepayer—and we all know that those in council houses are also affected—has become insupportable. Yesterday officers and officials of my county council came to the House to see the six Members of Parliament for the Hereford and Worcester area to complain about rate increases. Next year


the rate increase will be some 60 per cent. merely to maintain current services, quite apart from any growth. The prospect is appalling. They asked their Members of Parliament to obtain certain assurances about help in respect of rates. They want assurances over cuts in services.
We all understand that in a critical situation some services can no longer be maintained at levels we all wish to see. Cuts in services comprise one of the ways in which the man in the street will be given a true indication of the economic difficulties confronting the country.
The county council wanted the Government to give some direction as to which services should be considered for reductions so that there may be throughout the country some uniformity of treatment, although we appreciate that there will have to be variations in local services. We in the Hereford and Worcester area were fortunate in August in securing a visit by the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. He then undertook to examine the elements of the formula of rate support grant since as a county we are put at a disadvantage. I shall not bore the House with the technical details, but we hope that some consideration has been given to this matter and that we shall soon hear the results.
It is a great disappointment that the Secretary of State for the Environment has not felt able to speed up rate support grant payments since a number of authorities have great difficulty in meeting their current bills. My child attends a village school and I know that the form mistress has to go round factories in the Black Country getting waste paper on a Saturday morning to provide material for the children to do their work. Therefore, I am well acqainted with the severity of the situation and I hope that the Government are also aware of the position. It is a serious matter and must affect the morale of professional people of all grades in trying to carry out their jobs.
In this postponement of revaluation there is no recognition of the severity of the situation. I mentioned this omission from the Gracious Speech in an earlier debate. Here, we are presented with a Bill which postpones the revalua-

tion which is due in 1978, but that is already too far away to be of any benefit to ratepayers, and it is disappointing that the first measure on rating proposed by this Government postpones from 1978 to 1981 any hope that some alleviating action will be taken.
My reason for opposing this measure is that it affords neither revenue to the local authority nor relief to the ratepayer.

6.50 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Gordon Oakes): The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Jones) said earlier in the debate that it was pretentious to call this measure a General Rate Bill. He may be right. It is a very heavy title for an extremely short Bill. Throughout our proceedings today, I have been wondering whether the title had put off the Opposition from attending the debate because they were not sure whether they would be asked to debate the Bill or pay it.
Nevertheless, it has been an interesting debate, in the course of which the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) castigated the Government severely for introducing the Bill and then promptly left the Chamber. We have not seen him since. What is more, throughout most of the debate there has been no Opposition Whip present and, with one right honourable exception—and that right hon. Gentleman's loyalty and devotion to local government as well as to his party is greatly admired on this side of the House—

Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that there has been no Whip on the Opposition Front Bench. I am sitting here as a Whip.

Mr. Oakes: I wish that the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) had resumed his rôle as Opposition spokesman on local government and environment matters. But it is hypocritical of the Opposition to castigate the Government for this measure, pretending that they are so interested in ratepayers and are concerned that the Bill will affect them adversely, when they do not bother to attend an important debate of this kind. I might point out that for most of the debate the Government benches have been well filled, whereas nearly all the Opposition benches have remained unoccupied.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can it possibly be in order for a Minister to make such a misleading statement? A great many of my hon. Friends and I have been present during most of the debate, with only the odd minute or two out of the Chamber.

Mr. Oakes: I dislike being discourteous, but the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) has been one of the worst offenders. For most of the afternoon she has been in and out of the Chamber like a yo-yo.

Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: The Chamber will seem crowded in comparison with the number of hon. Members likely to be present for our next business concerning the National Theatre.

Mr. Oakes: We all know the reason, of course. Opposition Members have other matters on their mind which are taking place upstairs at the moment and which they regard as being more important than a postponement of rating revaluation.
Perhaps I might re-state the purpose of the Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government said at the outset of the debate this measure merely postpones revaluation from 1978 to 1981, and it does so because the Government have set up the Layfield inquiry into rating. I stress to both sides of the House, because I know hon. Members are worried about delay resulting from the Layfield report, that we want that report as early as possible.
Layfield's terms of reference are to report as soon as possible but not later than the end of 1975. That committee is undertaking, on a completely independent basis, the examination of the whole of local government finance. It will report next year. I suggest that it would be stupid for any Government to set in motion the whole of revaluation at a time when we are very short of valuers in the Inland Revenue, with the result that they were put to work on something which might be totally outdated by the time that the Layfield Committee reported.
I accept that the Opposition are honest. They are people of integrity. I say that especially of the right hon. Member for

Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). I accept that if they had been in Government they would have done what they promised, namely, during the lifetime of this Parliament to abolish domestic rating. Had that happened, whichever Conservative Minister survived the volcanic convulsions going on in the Conservative Party at the moment would have appeared at this Dispatch Box to introduce this same Bill—

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Nonsesnse.

Mr. Oakes: It would be a nonsense for any Government to proceed with revaluation and to waste scarce resources on it when the whole of the rating system and local government finance is in the melting pot.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Although I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the exceptional financial difficulties facing local government, will he indicate to us that his Government are prepared to announce additional financial aid for local government to enable it to get through the next year or so before the Layfield Committee reports? That is what we want to hear. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to see ratepayers taking action of the kind that the miners took and that the farmers are taking at present? I hope not. Is the hon. Gentleman prepared in the not-too-distant future to put real proposals before us showing that the Government are prepared to assist local government through the next two or three years?

Mr. Oakes: If I were to attempt to do that, I should be ruled out of order immediately. But I can assure the hon. Gentleman that within weeks there will be an increase order, which is fully debatable on an affirmative resolution of the House, and subsequently the Rate Support Grant Order for 1975–76. What is more, I can undertake that that will come this year. It will not come in February, as it did from the previous Government earlier this year, when we were fighting an election.
I am afraid that I am wandering away from the purpose of the Bill and getting out of order. I shall return to the matters with which I want to deal in winding up the debate.
The hon. Member for Hornsey attacked the Government on a number of counts.


Throughout his speech, he implied that in any event the Layfield Committee would propose no substantial change to the rating structure. That theme went right through the hon. Gentleman's speech. He was not expecting any changes from the Layfield Report. Therefore, he insisted that it was foolish for the Government to put off this revaluation.
I was amazed to hear the hon. Member for Hornsey make such an implicit assumption. He attacked the measure. He said that it was not our desire to save the time of valuers. He said that it was a habit of Labour Governments to introduce measures of this kind because they feared the electoral consequences of revaluation. If the hon. Gentleman were present, I should thank him for the confidence which undoubtedly he has in a Government who have a majority of only two or three, because his implicit assumption is that we are likely to remain in office for a period of four if not five years. If that assumption were correct it would be 1979 before the election came—after the effect of the 1978 revaluation.
The other assumption made by the hon. Gentleman—I saw it in a leader in The Times and it has been suggested by other hon. Gentlemen, again with the honourable exception of the right hon. Member for Crosby—is that this measure is necessary only because of our proposals to bring land into community ownership. I only wish—I know this wish is shared by my right hon. Friend—that the valuers who do this work for the Inland Revenue were the type of valuers that are available to do that, because we are keen on bringing this measure forward. But as the right hon. Member for Crosby clearly and honestly said, they are not—unless they leave the Inland Revenue service and enter local government service. It will be local government valuers who will be doing the revaluation, not Inland Revenue valuers.
On the face of the Bill, we accept that there is at present a shortage of valuers, and there has been for decades. Therefore, even if this revaluation does not take place, valuers in the Inland Revenue service at the moment are doing a tremendous job with, for example, the enormous backlog of appeals against rating

assessments. That is filling up their time. It is not that they are being switched away from their present work to work on bringing land into community ownership. There is no connection between the two, as my right hon. Friend told the House at least three times. I was delighted that the right hon. Member for Crosby, knowing the difference between local government valuation services and the Inland Revenue valuation service, endorsed that point.
I was interested in the right hon. Gentleman's timetable. If the Government were genuine, and it was Layfield causing the delay, he wondered whether it could not be a shorter period. If he were satisfied, on the three-year period, that we were saving valuers' time in order to see how Layfield came out, he said, he would look at this measure with more support and confidence than at present.
If the right hon. Gentleman works out the timetable, he will see that that is almost precisely what the Government are doing. Let us assume pessimistically—one must be fair and assume pessimistically on these matters—that Layfield will not report until the end of next year because of the enormity of the task before it. I sincerely hope that it reports much earlier, but one must, in government, expect the longest period. With Royal Commissions or with any commission of inquiry it is usually safe to do that. Let us assume that that is the case. That report must be considered not only by the Government, not only by the House, but at great length by local government. That will take about a year. The hon. Gentleman was quite right when he said that legislation would be unlikely to be brought forward until the end of 1976, and probably not until 1977.
All that time people will have been working, because this revaluation should start now for 1978. There will be busy people, where there are few of them, busily working, and possibly working at something of no avail to them. That is what we are seeking to avoid in the Bill.

Mr. Graham Page: This is the whole crux of this debate. Speaker after Opposition speaker has stressed the urgency. Cannot we get the Layfield Report earlier? Cannot the local authority associations be ready to consider it quickly


and cut down the period the hon. Gentleman mentions to a year instead of three years?

Mr. Oakes: On the timetable that I have given, even if the committee reported before the end of next year, I think we might say a year. There might be a two-year delay for the revaluation rather than a three—year delay. I give the right hon. Gentleman that point. The Government have cautiously asked for a three-year period rather than a two-year period. I will concede the year, but I believe that we are wise to allow for a three-year period.
I know—hon. Gentlemen opposite and my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) clearly made this point—that there are criticisms of the Bill. There are matters in the Bill that, frankly, the Government regret. However, on balance, rather than waste the valuers' time, it is important that we put back the revaluation. One reason, referred to by my hon. Friend, is that when revaluation is postponed the effects on such things as central heating, and so on, mean that certain people are paying less as their house has not been revalued and the rest of us are marginally paying more. But the Government considered that that price was well worth paying, in view of the tremendous amount of work involved for the Inland Revenue over a four-year period when revaluation takes place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South was right. The longer revaluation is delayed, the greater the jump for the individual in the amount of rates he has to pay. That is another consideration to be borne in mind. Again, we seek to avoid that and it is one of the reasons why we have laid down a three-year and not a five-year period. We did not want to skip a revaluation. We wanted a new Act to make the period three rather than five years.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) aptly expressed the purpose and reason for the Bill. He got it right in one—it is to save manpower. I suggest that it is, too, an earnest of the Government's good faith in our intention to listen closely to what Layfield says. We shall not pursue

our own path as though Layfield did not exist.
If we were not postponing revaluation, some Opposition hon. Members would say, at Question Time or in debate, "Despite the fact that you have a committee of inquiry looking into the rating system you are clearly going to do nothing about it because the valuers are scurrying about the country now, getting ready for the 1978 revaluation ".That is the accusation that would be made. They would say that we were wasting the valuers' time. We should be wasting the valuers' time if we were not to postpone the revaluation in the special circumstances that apply today.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) asked me two questions. He wants an assurance that the records of valuation will be kept. I suggest that that goes without saying. I accept the hon. Gentleman's point, and I take his reason for making it. I shall pass on that suggestion because, whatever Layfield may decide, those records would be invaluable for the structure and basis of whatever form a new system might take if Layfield were to suggest a system other than the present one—as indeed it might.
The hon. Gentleman asked as well for an assurance that the out-of-date assessments on nationalised industries would be considered, possibly in the revaluation. I may be wrong, but I believe that, technically, nationalised industry and Crown property do not normally come within the orbit of revaluation. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, that the basis of Crown rating and of the way we assess nationalised industry should be examined in detail by the Layfield Committee, because it may find a better system in those sectors. I have sat on the Opposition benches and raised those issues in respect of our present rating system, and I therefore give the hon. Gentleman those assurances.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned, rightly, the degree of hypocrisy that has come throughout the year from the Tory Front Bench on the whole question of rating. On Second Reading of the Local Government Bill on 12th November 1973—almost exactly a year ago—the Conservative Government had before them from the Labour Opposition a reasoned amendment asking for a Royal Commission on


rating. On looking through my speech on the winding up of that debate I am astonished at how prophetic I was about the outcry there would be about rates this year.
The right hon. Member for Crosby said that it would be foolish and a retreat to set up some other form of inquiry in view of the fact that the Conservatives had had a Green Paper and a White Paper, and that therefore the present form and state of the rating system was to remain.
What a sea change we have seen since February of this year in the attitude of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen. I should say to the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight that the one Liberal who was present at the debate came into our Lobby with us on that occasion, so I hope we may have his support on this Bill today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) said that the Government had treated local authorities in a rather cavalier way in not having had consultations about this before the Bill was introduced. Neither my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment nor any of my hon. Friends intended to treat local government in a cavalier way. On looking back on similar public measures one sees that such consultation has not beeen the rule. Never in the past has consultation taken place about whether a Bill should be introduced to put back revaluation. Nevertheless, we do not want to hurt the feelings of local authorities.
On balance, I regret that more consultation did not take place with local authorities at that time, but that is not to espouse the argument of the hon. Lady the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman), who said that this was never mentioned during the course of the election or in the Queen's Speech. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment issued a Press notice that this measure would be introduced in September this year, long before the election, and he notified the associations at that time. It is not true to say that we have suddenly pulled this rabbit out of the hat since the Queen's Speech last week and had not mentioned previously that we should bring a measure of this kind before the House.
The hon. Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd) wondered whether it would be pos-

sible to ask the Layfield Committee to speed things up. Although the hon. Gentleman would not be bitterly opposed to the Bill going through, he hopes, as I do, that the report from the Layfield Committee will come before the end of 1975. I repeat that I hope that it comes before the end of 1975, but the task we have given that committee is very big.
The Government are prepared to listen to the reasoned arguments of experts of all political persuasions, and of academics and people in local government, sitting for the first time, as far as I know, at an independent level looking at the whole system of local government finance. We have set up that inquiry, and we are prepared to listen to its findings. The Bill evidences our intention. We did not indulge in the sort of sweeping statement that we heard—probably only because of the election—all through the election period that all domestic rating would be abolished during the lifetime of the next Parliament, regardless of the inquiry, on which Conservatives sit, regardless of what the committee thought, and with no evidence being given to the House or the country about what system would be put in its place.

Mr. Hurd: Is it not a fair point that this has all been inquired into fairly recently? The hon. Gentleman's files must be heavy with evidence. Local authorities and local authority associations were lavishly consulted only two or three years ago. Surely that evidence is available to the Layfield Committee. It did not start from scratch.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that what he has said this evening has deepened my gloom about the timetable? He now says: Layfield by the end of 1975; 1976, consultation with people who have already been consulted; 1977, legislation. What does he see as the earliest year in which changes proposed by Layfield can he effected? Does he think that the present system will survive until then?

Mr. Oakes: I can only say to the House that we must be realistic. The committee is looking at an involved and complex subject, with new authorities, not the old authorities which were consulted previously, and with the explosive inflation that we have had in the rating system and local government finance. I


endorse the hon. Gentleman's call for speed. I hope that the Committee will report earlier, but I cannot give the House an indication of what timetable an outside independent body will have in reporting back to the House, except to say that its mandate from the Secretary of State is to report before the end of 1975—which, given the circumstances, was the longest possible time we could allow it. I remind the hon. Gentleman that, often, committees not given a deadline date sit for years, not months, in considering such a complex question.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter) outlined clearly what the Labour Government have done to help the ratepayer—direct financial help in July as well as an inquiry into the rating system. The Opposition, therefore, cannot accuse us of being iron-hearted towards the suffering ratepayers.
We are hoping that the inquiry will find a better system of local government finance. We say that it would be foolish, indeed, for any Government to use the scarce resources of valuers to engage now and for the next few years on a full revaluation of rating property, regardless of the fact that the Layfield Committee is sitting and may well recommend an entirely different system of local government finance. If further assurance be needed, I again assure the House that that is the reason, the true reason, the only reason for the Bill coming before the House today. I ask the House to accept our good faith and to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

NATIONAL THEATRE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

7.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Hugh Jenkins): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am particularly glad to be able to move the Second Reading of this Bill.

It is the last political necessity relating to the building of the National Theatre, and it so happens that when I was on the old London County Council—a dozen or more years ago—I moved the first motion which led eventually to the construction of the great building on the South Bank.
Incidentally, buildings take a little time to grow into the public heart. Even the one in which we stand has become truly revered only during my own lifetime. Victoriana was not quite so well looked at a score of years ago as it is today.
Throughout the years, there has been no public political division on the subject of the National Theatre, and I hope that there never will be—tonight or at any other time. There has been a great deal of argumentation and to-ing and fro-ing behind the scenes, but I should like to pay tribute both to the old London County Council and to the Greater London Council and to the leadership of both parties, particularly Sir Isaac Hayward, who was the leader of the LCC, and to Sir Reg Goodwin, the present leader of the Greater London Council. Without those two men, there would be no National Theatre.
The House will recall that there have already been three Acts of Parliament on the National Theatre—in 1949, 1968 and 1973. These raised the limit of the Government's financial contribution respectively from £1 million in 1949 to £3·75 million and then to £5·7 million in 1973. The GLC has likewise raised the original contribution by the LCC from £1·3 million to its present authorised level of £4·68 million. A smaller contribution from the Shakespeare Memorial Trust took the total resources available in 1973 to £10·55 million.
The task of bringing the project to completion has not been an easy one, either since the passing of the 1973 Act or before. Building work on the main structure and on the fitting out of the theatre has proceeded more slowly than had been hoped. In part this was due to delays arising from the three-day working week last winter. There has also been a shortage of some categories of workers and a shortage of some crucial materials.
In spite of these problems, the costs in excess of the limits set in 1973,


indicated in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill, are not out of line with the general rise in building costs for large projects since work on the National Theatre started in earnest in 1969. Over the whole of that period, the cost of the building—and there have been difficulties, problems and changes—has been rather less than the average cost attributable to similar buildings. In addition, the House will bear in mind the uniqueness of the project, which has meant that the board and the contractors do not have a series of comfortable precedents to guide them.
For all these reasons, it will not be possible for the theatre to open on 23rd April 1975, as originally hoped. It is now for the National Theatre Board to decide the new opening date.
It was clear earlier this year that the 1973 figure of £10·55 million would be overspent. The Government and the GLC, therefore, entered into urgent negotiations for a solution to these problems, with the result which I announced in a Written Answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Mitchell) on 31st October, from which I quote:
The Government and the Greater London Council have, subject to seeking the necessary authority from Parliament and the council "—
that is the GLC, of course—
for their respective contributions, reached agreement to provide the necessary resources to complete the National Theatre notwithstanding the further substantial rises in costs which have been encountered."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st October 1974; Vol. 880, c. 6.]
The Leader of the Council, in consultation with the leader of the minority party on the council, Mr. Horace Cutler—never at any time, so far as I am aware, has there been any party difference in the GLC on the matter—has agreed to recommend a contribution up to £1 million, or 50 per cent., whichever is the lesser amount, on the understanding that the balance of expenditure would be met by the Exchequer.
The Bill seeks authority to remove the present statutory restriction on the total Government contribution to enable the building to be completed. It is expected that the Exchequer contribution, due to the rising cost of building, will be in excess of £1 million. New arrangements have been made with the South Bank

Theatre Board to control this expenditure. This arrangement is, of course, subject to endorsement by the Greater London Council and to the enactment of the Bill we are now discussing.
I turn now to the text of the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to remove the statutory ceiling on the Government's contribution to the project, so that, in agreement with the GLC, the National Theatre building can now be completed as quickly as possible. This should not, however, be read as a resignation by the Government and the GLC from continued control over the costs of the project—far from it. I have always thought and have said in previous debates—and I believe the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) has said something similar—that it is a mistake to write into main legislation financial limits on expenditure.
For the National Theatre project a much more flexible but no less severe control is needed. This we and the GLC have set in hand. It will be noted from lines 11 and 12 of the Bill that no contribution by the Government can be made without the consent of the Treasury. We have specified that additional resources can be used only for completing already approved work. There can therefore be no question of new requirements being added to the various contracts simply because the statutory ceiling on expenditure is being removed.
Indeed, I venture to suggest that it is perhaps a pity that throughout the whole of the experience of the building of this theatre we did not have the methods of control that we are now commending to the House rather than the successive statutory limits, which as some of us pointed out in debates at the time would be bound to be eroded by the inevitable process of inflation.
I should like to comment on the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, particularly the second sentence. Although it is not possible at this stage to make an accurate estimate of the final total of additional contributions required, it is expected that the excess costs will be not less than £2 million. The GLC is considering later this month a recommendation that it should contribute to this excess, as I have said, up to £1 million, or 50 per cent. of the costs, whichever is


the less. This means that the Government contribution is expected to be not less than £1 million. Payments will be spread over 1975 and 1976 on the present timetable put forward by the board.
This great project will exemplify the curious and rewarding fact that our people and our language have made perhaps their most significant contribution to world culture through the medium of the drama. We are, in the National Theatre, declaring our pride in the power of our language to communicate and in the ability of our creative and interpretive artists to express themselves in terms which will move us and perhaps reveal humanity to men and women.
It is, of course, possible to argue that this can be done anywhere—in the street, if necessary—without all this capital expenditure. We can obviously have drama without theatres—

Mr. John Ellis: We have it here all the time.

Mr. Jenkins: As my hon. Friend says, we make our contribution occasionally to that end in the House. Theatres are increasingly expensive to build. But it is impossible to imagine that this country can continue to play the leading rôle it now performs in the theatrical life of the world if we accept the argument that the small, the cheap and the old are good enough for us. There is a place for the large and for the small. Are we to accept the argument—surely not?—that we must never make a gesture, that we must never stretch ourselves, that we must not take risks? The artist is in the business of taking risks. That is what art is about to a large extent. It is the job of those who support the artist to enable him to do so. The multiplication of State support for the arts in the last 10 years has taken place in parallel with the building of the National Theatre, and I think this to be no accident.
By putting more money in at the top, one gradually raises the proportion of State and municipal help at all levels. It has been a matter of some concern that privately-owned buildings can stand empty and yet appreciate in value. Centre Point is the great example of that. The Government have no intention of letting that happen to this imaginative publicly-owned building on the South Bank.
All those seeking public support for the arts should perhaps recognise more clearly than they do that they sink or swim together. It is not the case that if very small sums of money are spent in the capital the money which is not being spent in the capital will then be available to be passed out to the regions. These things go hand in hand, and, while the actual proportion—even with the National Theatre—of the Arts Council's resources which is being spent in the capital is a declining proportion of the total, simultaneously with the building of this great theatre we have been pushing more and more money out into the regions. That is a process which was carried out under the previous administration, I freely admit, and it is a process which we intend to maintain.
We cannot survive through arguments about the various shares of the cake even before it is decided how large it should be. For the New Statesman of all journals to reach the conclusion at this stage that the whole project is a mistake is enough to make Kingsley Martin turn in his grave.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: That paper is generally wrong.

Mr. Jenkins: I shall not extend into an argument with the hon. Gentleman on that matter, but on this occasion we are at least agreed that it was wrong on that point.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, I moved a motion a dozen or more years ago, when I was on the old LCC, saying that we should build this theatre. It was carried unanimously. It is now my task to move the last legislative stage in its construction. I do so happily and with confidence and pride. I move the Second Reading of the Bill, and I ask the House to approve in the determination that the National Theatre will be not a millstone but a milestone, that it will not detract from its fellow theatres but will, under energetic direction, set new standards of achievement.

7.33 p.m.

Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: I am very pleased to give the Bill a warm welcome. The Opposition fully support it in principle. Bills with fixed sums upon their faces are always rigid instruments. That, I presume, is why


the Treasury is so fond of them. But inflation has made this sort of fixed-sum Bill a quite impossible device.
The last National Theatre Bill was in fact—if I may include a modest passing reference to myself—introduced by me at the Dispatch Box five days after my appointment to ministerial office, which, appropriately, took place on 5th November 1972. It was 10th November that the second instalment of the National Theatre saga was received with a welcome by all parts of the House. It added £1·35 million to the Bill. I had hoped—indeed we had all hoped—that that would be enough, but it was proved not to be so.
On that occasion the speech from the Opposition Front Bench was made by the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds)—far from late, but very much lamented. We rose and fell together. He was dismissed by the Prime Minister and I was dismissed by the people—vox populi, vox dei, sed vox diaboli, vox Wilsoni. Fortunately both of us are still here and neither of us seems to have suffered from those adventures. Perhaps it is because we have followed the advice of Mr. Jimmy Durante who said, "Be nice to people on the way up, because you meet the same people when you are on the way down."

Mr. Andrew Faulds: Would the hon. Gentleman be good enough to give that advice to the Prime Minister?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The Prime Minister, I think, has always followed it, which explains why he has survived for so long.
That this Bill is now necessary is no one's fault. I do not blame it on the present Minister. It cannot be laid at the door of my noble Friend Lord Eccles. The hon. Gentleman is always so anxious to blame things on him. It is due to the demon of inflation, which is threatening the whole of our society, our institutions, and the future of the National Theatre.
The costs of this theatre, in themselves, are not astronomic. We are told that another £2 million will see the project through. Altogether, the theatre will cost about £12 million. If one compares it with a building such as the Sydney Opera House, which cost two or three times as much, allowing for inflation, it is not a

very expensive project for a country which is still, despite our difficulties, as rich as our own.
This project is of immense importance for the future. Long after the dreary echoes of our economic debates have died away, long after today's economic theorists have been dismissed and no one takes an interest in their disputes, the effects of this theatre will be real and important, affecting the lives of millions of people—their outlook, their horizons, their whole vision of life. It is a much more important project than anything else that has been discussed today. I am sorry that there are not more hon. Members here. But, after all, as we know, quality is much more important than quantity. You know that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. After all, there is only one of you. How, indeed, could there be two?
It is curious that at this moment, which should be a moment of triumph, 70 years on from that great dream of Sir Israel Gollancz—which he had in the more spacious and stable year of 1904—when it is about to become a reality, the critics are at work. The gnats—I mean, the rats—the rats are gnawing—

Mr. Cormack: The gnats are gnawing, too.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: When I mentioned "gnats" I was thinking of the New Statesman, which is a sort of gnat —a gadfly. It is extraordinary that there should be this carping, although I am not surprised at the New Statesman. It is a paper that has always acted as a jackal, snapping at the heels of various causes, and it is now at the heels of artistic progress. I agreed with the Minister when he termed that leading article headed "The National Theatre Tragedy" a disgrace, because that is what it was. It was a disgrace that it was written, and it would be a calamity if anyone were taken in by it.
I suppose all great ideas, when they come to be achieved, suffer from a period of reaction. People who have campaigned for a long time for something tend to get exhausted. After all, it happened in Italy after the Risorgimenta. After the great efforts to unite Italy, it was Fascism which eventually supervened. Our own efforts to enter the European Community were crowned with success a short time


ago after so many years, yet now we are in a period of disillusionment with the Community.
It is the same with the National Theatre. Once it is seen that a project can be achieved, the critics feel that they have a licence to raise their voices. Therefore, let us discount some of this criticism on that ground. Let us discount also the jealousy that there is, and what I may call—I hope without offence—the sheer theatrical bitchiness which exists and which is being directed against the National Theatre Board by some people in the theatre world.
There is another point that is much more important and much more real. There is a fear amongst those interested in the theatre that the theatre elsewhere in London and in the provinces will be starved of funds to finance the National Theatre. That is a genuine and not unworthy fear. I hope that it will not happen. Indeed it must not happen. A national theatre bought and built at the expense of the living theatre elsewhere in Britain would not be a national theatre at all. It would be better not to have it, if that were the price that had to be paid.
We must always consider the theatre in other parts of the country, and we must consider the interests of the commercial theatre as well. On this point, I hope that the Minister will finally bestir himself on behalf of the Criterion Theatre and press his colleague the Secretary of State for the Environment to hold an inquiry into the fate of that theatre to stop it from closing, because once a theatre is closed its future is radically and permanently affected.

Mr. Faulds: This is a slightly tendentious matter about the Criterion, but I should like it put on record that I raised this with the Secretary of State for the Environment. In a letter to him some weeks ago I suggested that an inquiry should be held, and I am still waiting for a reply. I do not know what the Under-Secretary is doing about this matter, but it is urgent.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I am not sure how lax you will be in this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but perhaps it might be worth while, since the matter has been raised on both sides of the House, to say that the Criterion matter is one in which both my right hon. Friend and I are closely

involved. At the moment it stands between the Greater London Council and the Westminster City Council. I personally have no doubt at all that the Criterion will be preserved for its proper theatrical use.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: May I intervene in this dialogue? I am glad to hear the Minister's expression of faith, but I was not asking for faith; I was asking for works, which is another matter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warley, East on his zeal in this cause. I wish that the zeal on the back benches on the Government side was matched by an equal zeal on the Front Benches.

Mr. Faulds: Please do not praise me.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The hon. Gentleman must bear it as best he may.
The economic position which we face is grave, but if we look at the actual figures involved, we see the whole question of the National Theatre and its financing in proper proportion. The whole of the arts budget is £18·8 million, compared with a budget for education alone of nearly £4,000 million. The Arts Council is asking for an extra £6 million to save us from what would, indeed, he a major national disaster, the loss of one of our great cultural institutions, such as the English National Opera, Covent Garden or the Royal Shakespeare Company. From those calculations of need, the needs of the National Theatre are excluded.
How much will the National Theatre need? It is not only a question of erecting the building. Just as important, and more expensive in the long run, will be keeping the National Theatre going. The figures which I have show that occupancy and management will cost £1·15 million a year, that the Olivier Theatre will cost £1·95 million and that the Lyttelton Theatre will cost £2·5 million—a total of £5·6 million—and these figures refer to the subsidy that is required from the Government, leaving aside whatever revenue may be obtained from the box office, which, of course, is a variable figure.
That is a large sum in the context of the arts budget but it is not a large sum in the context of the Budget as a whole—a couple of bolts on Concorde, perhaps. But it is vital that that money should


be provided and that it should be guaranteed by the Minister today.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: The hon. Gentleman has it wrong. The fact is that the subsidy for running the building, without anything else happening, is £1·15 million. The Olivier 'theatre only—the hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted the figures —will cost a subsidy of £1·95 million, and to operate the Olivier and the Lyttelton Theatres will require a subsidy of £2·5 million. That is a total. He is mistaken in adding these figures together. Also, the figures which the hon. Gentleman has are estimates for the needs of the theatre itself, and they will have to be subjected to the usual close scrutiny to which the Arts Council subjects all estimates brought to it.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful for the Minister's explanation. He has resources to make use of which I do not have. But whether or not those figures should be treated as cumulative, the point is absolutely valid—that the subsidy revenue must be guaranteed by the Government, and we want a statement that that will be done. Will the Minister give that guarantee now?

Mr. Jenkins: I cannot give any guarantee other than that which I have given, that it is not the Government's intention that this building should become a sort of public Centre Point.

Mr. Cormack: Centre court.

Mr. Jenkins: A centre court perhaps—it may well do—but not a Centre Point. As to confirming specific figures, it is not possible now.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: That is a totally inadequate assurance, because the future of the theatre is already a matter of public debate. At this very moment articles are appearing in the Press. Discussion about the theatre's viability is widespread, and this would have been an ideal opportunity for the Minister to set these doubts and anxieties at rest.
The general theatre grant is £3·2 million. Those are the figures from the 1973–74 Estimates. I have not the figures for 1974–75. I hope that there will be no question of reducing that annual grant to theatres outside the National Theatre in

an effort to pick up some money for the National Theatre.

Mr. Jenkins: indicated assent.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: The hon. Gentleman is nodding. I take it that that is a guarantee of a kind. What can we do in this very grave situation for the National Theatre? One solution would be to finance it at the expense of others. Fortunately we all reject that. The Minister has rejected it this evening. The Opposition rejected it. Mr. Peter Hall, the director of the National Theatre, has rejected it. The whole vision of what the National Theatre could accomplish, being a centre both for regional visits from other companies and itself sending out companies to the regions, would vanish if this were so.
Second, one could be cheeseparing and start cutting down, as unfortunately the director of the National Theatre has already had to do. He has had to cut down on his future programme. Some of the auditoria might not be opened. A saving could be made on production by cutting down the expense, but I think that would be a disastrous recipe. The National Theatre is one of the finest buildings we have in Britain and the productions should be worthy of the building and worthy of the concept.
Yet another expedient which has been put forward is to save by merging the National Theatre Company with the Royal Shakespeare Company. One might save something in that way but it would be at a very heavy artistic cost. By a happy accident of history we have two national companies, one competing against the other. It is as though one of the fantasies of the Secretary of State for Industry had suddenly been realised in the artistic world, one national institution competing against another. We have that position by an accident of history. Let us not sacrifice it. Furthermore, it would be very bad for the theatrical profession. It would reduce the opportunities for employment in a profession which already suffers the burdens of unemployment to an extent unknown to any other profession in the country.
The Royal Shakespeare Company has its own character—predominantly, not totally, Shakespeare, predominantly a classical repertoire—although I think it is


right to go for other activities, such as the contemporary dramatists or experiments such as the Space Theatre in Stratford.
I therefore reject that proposal and hope that the Minister rejects is at well.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: indicated assent.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Is that a nod?

Mr. Jenkins: indicated assent.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am delighted that that should be so and that we are of one mind on this most important question.
So we are left with only one alternative, which is to find the money that is necessary for this project. I do not believe that the arts need any other justification than themselves. I am a strong believer in arts for arts' sake, but for the purpose of an argument to appeal to the economist and the economically-minded one should say that the National Theatre will pay for itself in invisible earnings in a short space of time. People flock to Britain because of our theatrical tradition. They come here to go to the theatre. It is possible to get into the theatre in London before one's holiday is over, which is quite impossible in a city such as New York. Thus, far from being a white elephant, this is much more likely to prove a golden one, which will fully justify any capital investment that is made.
I believe it is necessary to set at rest the minds of others who are concerned with the theatre in Britain. I would therefore put this suggestion to the Minister: why not make the special grant for the big four—namely, Covent Garden, the National Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the English National Theatre—a separate grant-in-aid, payable through the Arts Council, but as a separate accounting matter? In that way the Minister would effectively allay the fears of those who think that the Arts Council will pay for these big projects at their expense.
We put forward this suggestion in our policy document issued during the election by my former colleague, unfortunately no longer with us, the former Member for Ipswich, Mr. Ernie Money, to whom I should like to pay a tribute for his work for the arts. Following a telephone conversation this afternoon, I know that

it is also favoured by the chairman of the Drama Panel of the Arts Council, Mr. Jack Lambert, the most distinguished literary editor of the Sunday Times. So I hope that serious consideration will be given to this point.
I have put a number of questions to the Minister. When he replies to the debate I hope that he will answer them, and that he will amplify the nods, which are welcome but which it is hardly possible to register in HANSARD.
Do the sums which are involved here cover all the equipment that the theatre will require? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what will happen to the Old Vic when it is vacated? This is most important. For that matter, what will happen to the Young Vic, which carries so many of the hopes of our theatrical future? Is it intended that all the three auditoria at the National Theatre should be opened and used from the beginning? What will happen to the Cottesloe auditorium? We have had the Minister's assurance against the merger with the RSC, but I should like him to comment on the suggestion I have made of a separate grant-in-aid to the Arts Council for the theatre and the opera.
I have one final point, which is perhaps the most important of all. We must consider the Bill in the context of grants for the arts as a whole. This is a real moment of truth for everyone in the House who is interested in the arts, because we must know where the Government stand on the financing of and aid for the arts. On Tuesday night we received a severe shock when we heard the Leader of the House say in English less than elegant—it is not the English we object to, but the sentiments enshrined in that execrable grammar—that the art galleries, the theatres and the ballet will have to tighten their belts.
What does that mean? We have a right to know. If actors are being asked to tighten their belts, let me tell the Minister of some figures given to me this afternoon by Equity. In the West End theatre it is only since January 1974 that the minimum weekly wage has been £33 and until recently commercial actors in the provinces received a wage of £18 a week, which has recently been raised to £30 a week. The most recent survey made by Equity estimates that the average annual median earnings of actors


are £1,000 a year and of actresses just over £500; this is because the median number of weeks worked in a year for actors is 14·5 and for actresses 11·5. Equity estimates that between 50 per cent. and 75 per cent. of the profession are unemployed at any one time.
There is not much scope for the tightening of any belts there. Nor is there scope among the directors of art galleries who are struggling against the most appalling inflationary burdens to keep the doors of their galleries open and the ordinary services ticking over. I hope we shall have a clarification of the Government's position from the Minister this evening.
Does the Minister who represents the arts share those sentiments? If so, it is disgraceful. The rôle of the Minister for the arts—so well fulfilled by the Minister's great predecessor, Lady Lee—is to be the titular head and spokesman for the entire range of professions who are involved in the arts and all who work in the field of art.
We expect the Minister to be the champion of the arts in Britain. Other Ministers are allowed freedom of discourse about issues such as South Africa. Why should there not he freedom of speech about the arts? Why should not the Minister take advantage of the opportunities that his colleagues have and let his mind be known? If he does not, all confidence in him in the artistic world will simply evaporate.
I must tell the Minister, without being too censorious, that his record to date does not give us great hope or encouragement. Those gradiose projects which he outlined before coming to office have vanished without trace. We have not heard a word from him on the question of exempting the work of living artists from value added tax. At least during the election we pledged ourselves to support the project put forward by the European Commission for the abolition of VAT on all in the art world, and we said that we would implement it as soon as it became Community policy.
The Minister's record on the wealth tax is appalling. Instead of pressing the Chancellor for exemption for the great collections in our country houses, the great works of art which are so valuable to this country, he has lain supine—[Interruption.]—yes, supine—at the feet

of the Chancellor and has done nothing to champion the cause of the arts. The hon. Gentleman has allowed the interests of finance and of one Department, the Treasury, to trample over the interests of the arts which he is meant to be protecting. Yet it is to protect the arts that he is on the Front Bench.
The truth is that at a time of economic crisis, when it is going to be much more difficult to achieve our material goals, we should spend more, not less, on the arts. We may not be able to achieve material things, but at least we can achieve our spiritual and artistic objectives. The sums are absurdly small. Even in time of war, when we were facing our greatest peril, we followed a policy of spending more on the arts than had ever been spent before.
There is the further point that for a very small investment we get immense returns. The theatre above all has been one of our greatest achievements. Drama with poetry and the novel form a splendid trinity of achievement in English literature. That, after all, has been our lasting conquest. Long after the last rays of the sun have set over a vanished empire the conquest of the English language will remain. It is the tongue that is spoken throughout the world and that people want to hear worthily presented in the British theatre when they come here.
I realise that the powers of the Minister who has responsibility for the arts are limited. They are not great in terms of political power. Indeed, those who are obsessed with a false philosophy of glittering prizes would not envy the Minister. The position of Minister for the Arts is one not of great power but it is one of great influence. He has the power to set the tone of discussion in the artistic world and to champion the cause of the arts.
If the Minister fights the battle for artistic values, we shall support him. There is no desire on our part, nor on the Liberal benches, to make this a party political matter. However, if the Minister fails to stand up for the arts both inside and outside the Government, if he shows lack of courage or of persistence, then we shall not forgive him. We shall show him no quarter. The test of a Minister's worth is whether he can fight for the causes for which he has been given responsibility. The test in this case will be not only whether the Minister has the money


for this building, which he has, but whether he will obtain generous Government financial support so that the National Theatre can be a worthy showpiece for works of the greatest literature ever created.

8.5 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: While the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) was speaking, I was hoping that I would be able at the end of his speech to say that I agreed with him in every respect. However, towards the end he turned to make a very unfair attack on my hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts, who fights as keenly for the arts as anyone possibly could, and I would obviously differ from the hon. Gentleman on that score.
On other matters, and on his general approach, I agree with him—with one exception. I doubt very much whether his idea of having a separate Arts Council grant for the four major recipients of Arts Council money is really a workable device and whether any Chancellor would agree to it. It would appear to be an obvious trick to make other recipients of Arts Council money believe that they are not in competition with the major recipients.
When the matter arose in the House many years ago, I was doubtful whether the amount of money then proposed for the building of the National Theatre was sufficient. My scepticism was born of experience. I questioned whether the £7½ million would be enough. I was assured by the Minister then responsible, now Baroness Lee, that this was so. I should like to quote the exchange that took place at Question Time on 21st March 1968. I asked my right hon. Friend:
What will happen if, in view of rising costs for building the theatre, the final expenditure is more than is anticipated?
Her reply was:
I think that, with £72 million … if we cannot build a splendid theatre, we all ought to jump in the Thames."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st March 1968; Vol. 761, c. 566.]
No one has done so. No one has given a lead. Obviously someone ought to do that, because long before the recent rapid inflation occurred, the original estimate was greatly exceeded.
We are all delighted to know that the National Theatre is nearing completion. After many long delays, which have been exceedingly inconvenient to the management of the National Theatre, to artists and to technicians, it is approaching completion. We hope that before long it will be in operation. All those who have had the privilege of seeing it must agree that it is, indeed, a magnificent building; that it is highly functional and not lavish; that the many stages are equipped with devices which will enable any producer to indulge to the full his imagination and to put on stage tricks and stunts, hitherto unheard of.
When it comes to subsidiary but very important matters such as back-stage accommodation and dressing rooms for the actors, the new National Theatre will, I believe, be better than any theatre in the world. I consider the architecture of the building magnificent, although inevitably it has been the subject of a good deal of criticism.
As the hon. Member for Chelmsford said, now that the building is completed and nearly ready for occupation, many distinguished people—I am not talking about the New Statesman—in the commercial theatre and subsidised theatre are getting worried about the money which the National Theatre will absorb. Their anxiety is understandable. I hope that it is not justified. Some of them have written a letter to The Times. It was signed by the leading members of subsidised theatres, not only in London but also in the regions. They said, in effect, "With all this money which the National Theatre will need if it is to survive, what is to happen to us? Shall we be restricted?" To that question there has to this day been no satisfactory reply.
These questions and criticisms would have been more appropriately raised by these people when the whole idea of a great National Theatre building was first put forward. It was clear then that such a theatre could not operate without substantial subsidies from the Arts Council. In those days, however, the people concerned were full of euphoria and excitement at having this great theatre in London. Now the great day is here they are getting worried about it.
It is said that confession is good for the soul, and I confess that when this


building was contemplated I was, I believe, one of the few people deeply interested in the theatre who was doubtful whether it was necessary or desirable. I took the view that what was wanted was a magnificent national company which had plenty of money from the Arts Council, which could employ the finest actors, producers and technicians, and which was exceedingly well equipped. I argued that a special great building was unnecessary, that "the play was the thing" rather than a theatre building and that difficulties would arise—especially financial difficulties—if such vast sums of money were put into a new theatre building.
I had in mind then that at the Old Vic, where the National Theatre has operated for many years, many plays, ancient and modern, had been magnificently produced. They had been staged there to perfection. They could not have been produced more effectively in a new theatre, however magnificently it might be equipped.
However, it is no good looking back to the past. We now have this exceedingly fine building, and the problem is what will happen to its finances. Will it be enabled to operate as it should? The Bill provides the money for the building, and that is fine. But the real question is will it be able to operate as it should through adequate subsidies. We have been told that the running costs will be enormous.
All hon. Members who are interested in the arts and the theatre must ardently wish that the Government will make the money available. We are particularly worried, however, by what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said the other day about actors and others having to tighten their belts. What he said may mean nothing or it may mean something. Perhaps all he meant was to say in a general way that we must be economic in what we do. I am sure that he did not mean that there would be reductions in the salaries of actors and actresses. He must have meant that there must be some reduction in the activities of the subsidised theatre companies, that they would not be able to spend as much as they were already spending, that they would not be able to produce the same

number of plays, and that their activities would have to be restricted.
If that is the Government's view about the theatre generally—and I assume that my right hon. Friend was referring only to theatres receiving a subsidy from the Arts Council—if all these theatre enterprises have to tighten their belts, what on earth will happen to the National Theatre? Until we have a clearer statement from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, I and many other hon. Members will be exceedingly worried. We want definite assurances.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I think I can give my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) some assurance. I think that the views of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer are likely to be in accord with those my right hon. Friend has been expressing and with those I hold myself.

Mr. Strauss: I am glad to hear that. The idea of the National Theatre getting a substantial grant while money to other theatres is curtailed is abhorrent not only to us but to the director of the National Theatre. I quote in this connection a statement made recently by Mr. Peter Hall:
If adequate funds for the health of the new National Theatre can only be provided by starving others, then that, to my mind, is a negation of what the National Theatre is about. It must be part of the theatre of the whole, contributing its facilities to everybody. Vice versa, the National Theatre has little meaning and little purpose if other theatres are weak.
My hon. Friend is encouraging in what he has just said, but his words are in contrast to what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said the other day. I hope that my hon. Friend's statement was made on the basis of a definite promise from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Theatrical, ballet and operatic enterprises which receive Government grants are now planning how to curtail their activities in order to save money. They feel sure that the Arts Council will want them to economise, or that the Arts Council will not in future provide them with the money that is necessary to maintain their existing activities, in view of world inflation.
I turn now to another matter which, though small, is causing considerable anxiety. I ask my hon. Friend the


Minister to bear this point in mind. I do not ask him for an answer to it at the moment. People in other subsidised theatres are noticing that the National Theatre will not only absorb large sums of money, but will also make great demands upon human resources in the theatre, more especially, the higher technicians and administrative staff who run theatres. The demand of the National Theatre is such, and the salaries it is offering are so much greater than in other theatres, that there is fear of a considerable new financial burden being placed upon them.
I would not have taken much notice of this point had I not seen a letter signed by many theatre directors. I checked the truth of what they said. The National Theatre has been advertising for higher technicians, catering managers, box office managers and other staff and has been offering salaries immensely higher than in other theatres. This is causing disturbance—

Mr. Clement Freud: I wish to elucidate upon this point. At the Old Vic at present the average salary is made up of 25 per cent, basic pay and 75 per cent. overtime. The fact that the National Theatre advertises for staff at rates substantially in excess of the basic pay of, for instance, other theatre technicians in no way means that people will be paid more money in full.

Mr. Strauss: I hope that that is so, but my information is different. I have found, for instance, that people in managerial and higher technical jobs have been astounded by the salary being offered by the National Theatre compared with what they are now getting. I do not want to argue this across the Floor of the House, but I could give details of a number of cases.
We have now got a fine National Theatre, and we have everything to make it a success. We have actors and actresses as fine as those anywhere else in the world, and we have great playwrights. We have the finest stage equipment and we are fortunate to have a director of outstanding ability, whose experience and achievements in all avenues of theatrical life have earned deep respect throughout the theatrical world. All the ingredients are there to make the National Theatre a success. It is up to

us to see that the money will be available to ensure that facilities exist to enable them to function successfully. We can do this only by constant pressure on the Government.
Britain's economic standing and world influence has been waning in recent years, but our cultural reputation stands as high as ever, particularly our reputation in drama. That reputation we have enjoyed for centuries—even in the 16th century when a version of Shakespeare's plays was being produced on the continent.
In these days whenever I go to the theatre—whenever the Whips allow me to go—I find our theatres, particularly the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare and the Royal Court full of foreign visitors. Indeed it is often difficult to find a native there. It is a grand thing that people come from abroad to visit England and make a visit to one of our theatres a high priority. We must maintain that reputation. It is an activity in which England can still glory without shame.
We must see to it that whatever economies may be necessary, none should be imposed by the Treasury on the Arts Council. We in this country even now spend on the arts far less than many continental countries. The theatre, the opera, the ballet are great national assets. We must preserve them at all costs and not allow the Treasury, however desirous it may be to counter inflationary pressures, to impede the great national cultural achievements which we have so laboriously and successfully built up over the years. They must be allowed to continue and flourish.

8.28 p.m.

Mr. Clement Freud: When I left home this afternoon to come to the House, my 12-year old daughter asked what I was going to do. I said, "It is the National Theatre Bill". She said, "Will you have to pay?" I very much hope so because the National Theatre needs money badly.
We have heard a lot about the history of the National Theatre. The subject was first mentioned in Parliament—and I am afraid that not even the Father of the House will remember this—on 16th June 1848. There was a petition for a national theatre because the two theatres that the Italians and French had in London at the


time were considered to be immoral. The petition was brought by a Mr. Webster and presented by the Earl of Fitzhardinge. The petition said:
That the circumstances of Drury-lane and Covent-Garden Theatres being open for foreign, and not English performance, tended to pervert and vitiate the taste of the public, and to distract them from the love and patronage of the English drama. That Her Majesty's Italian Theatre in the Haymarket, and the French Theatre in St. James's, were known to be more than adequate…"—
in other words, for those with foreign tastes. Lord Brougham asked:
Would it be any benefit to English workmen to have the theatre shut up?
The report continues:
He must take that opportunity of expressing the disgust with which he had read accounts of scenes which did such discredit to good sense.…
It is strange that now, 125 years later, we should be perverting the nationals of France and Italy with our obscene theatre. But things move slowly. I do not want to make political capital out of this subject, although it was rather well done by the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas).
In 1905 there was another reference to a national theatre.
Mr. W. F. D. Smith (Strand, Westminster): To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has been requested to grant an annual subsidy towards the permanent establishment of a National Repertory Theatre.
Mr. Austen Chamberlain replied:
Yes, Sir, I have been requested to lay before His Majesty's Government a proposal to grant an annual subsidy of £10,000. … I have replied that I am unable to recommend such a grant from public funds.
So at the beginning of this century £10,000 was too much.
On 21st January 1949 the Treasury announced:
… it is estimated that it will cost about £1 million to build a memorial theatre … worthy of the name of Shakespeare and worthy of this country."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st January 1949; Vol. 460, c. 440.]
There was much jocular conjecture in that debate about the political interference in a national theatre. It was thought that it might lead to the giving of plum parts to members of the Government or perhaps to their protegés. Looking round this Chamber, one hesi-

tates to cast people directly, but perhaps the line of Lady Macbeth,
Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers",
would be becoming to the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) in the present situation—

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Or the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short).

Mr. Freud: I leave the actual casting to hon. Members who may be fortunate enough, Mr. Speaker, to catch your eye later in the debate.
Mr. George Bernard Shaw advises about the House of Commons,
Do not waste too much time in the gabble shop.
Looking round this Chamber, I see that that advice has been taken by about 621 right hon. and hon. Members.
I come now to the National Theatre on the South Bank. The situation is very simple. Here we have a theatre which has in one building three theatres, plus balconies, terraces and catering facilities. I suppose that I must profess an interest in that I am a member of one of the subcommittees.
Admittedly the project needs a lot of money, and, like all hon. Members, I am keen that this money should be given. However, what frightens me, in addition to the fear of the hon. Member for Chelmsford that if this money goes to the National Theatre it may be that other branches of the industry will suffer, is that having seen this theatre set-up there should be any reduction in the total plan.
There is the Olivier Theatre, which seats 1,100. There is the Lyttelton Theatre, which seats 900. Then there is the smaller Cottesloe Theatre. The figures that we have here, by and large, are the right ones. But, although at the moment the subsidy for every £1 earned at the box office would be £1·2 if the whole National Theatre enterprise ran as it should, if it were decided through lack of funds to have open only the Olivier Theatre the subsidy would rise to £1·8 for every £1 received at the box office. I submit that this is an appalling waste of money. The National Theatre, as a concept, is a great one, but to cut it now, to use it piecemeal and to lose the actors and the production facilities would be invidious.
I listened to the Father of the House eulogising about the Old Vic, and I have fond, loving memories of it. But there is so much which cannot be done at the Old Vic, and there is so much expense involved in doing what can be done. I intervened in the speech of the Father of the House in order to explain about the high wages. That is one of the factors killing the Old Vic theatre. The creation of a repertory theatre which can go across the country as a touring theatre is so expensive that it is almost inconceivable. The ideal of having a different play on every couple of days, of having plays in repertory, is so expensive that much of the grant the Government give to the Old Vic is taken up in merely trying to keep more than one play for a long season, because that is the only way it can make money.

Mr. Strauss: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the National Theatre, when in its new building, will not play in repertory the same as at the Old Vic? Surely it will.

Mr. Freud: That is exactly what it will do. It will be set up to play repertory. It has enough sophisticated equipment within itself as it is projected now. It can do repertory without causing people to work 75 per cent. of their time at overtime rates. That is why the National Theatre is needed so badly.
Interference in the National Theatre scheme has been frightening. The job of Mr. Peter Hall and his men and women is not easy. In September 1969 the South Bank Theatre Board agreed to award the building contract to McAlpine's. It agreed to do this because McAlpine's said that three and a half years was the time it would take, and it was the best offer.
By February 1973 the completion of the new building had been retarded by 13 months. In March 1973 the current estimate went up another month. At the board's meeting in June of that year Sir Max Rayne reported the National Theatre Board's anxiety and he advised the board that February 1975 was the proposed date.
I ask the House to remember that all this time staff were being engaged or partly engaged, and put back, and that was no easy matter.
In July 1973 the National Theatre Board was told that June 1974 completion

was the latest, after which a February 1975 opening could be achieved. In September of that year it was again put back.
The October meeting of the building sub-committee heard a report from Mr. Softly—a very good name, I submit—that there had been no improvement and work would have to be accelerated if the June 1974 target date were to be met. McAlpine's blamed lack of information. The December building sub-committee considered industrial disputes and forecast a completion six months later. In March it was again put forward.
So it has gone on. I will not bore the House with this, because it is very boring, but I will say that the National Theatre as we now have it is the best theatre we have ever had in this country. When it is completed it may well stand us in at £13 million, but if that building were erected today, at today's prices, it would be worth £35 million and would be a great snip at that price.
It is only our basic, national defeatist attitude, our strange reluctance to blow our own trumpet, that stopped us from proclaiming this and making more people realise what a fine building we have. I would be unhappy if the Minister did not get from the Treasury enough money not only for this imaginative project, but to ward off the fears of the hon. Member for Chelmsford. It is essential that we have not only a National Theatre that would be a showpiece, but a National Theatre as it was conceived. We do not want one as it might be when the Treasury has had its say, and closed down this and halved that, and stopped it from being carpeted or curtained or from having the right catering facilities, and so on.
The aim of the theatre is absolutely clear. It should go on the way in which it was thought out and conceived. It should not be seduced by the almost successful three-day week of the Tory Party. Unlike the results of the three-day industrial working week, I warn the Minister, audiences, if they came only once every other day, would spend no more money and would not listen any more attentively. They would receive nothing more.
Let us make it clear that delays mean money. I see that the Minister is speaking earnestly to his financial advisers


even now, and I am grateful. But the longer the delays, the more money the project will cost. The suggestion of the hon. Member for Chelmsford that there should be a separate grant is excellent. That is the only way in which we may be assured that the National Theatre will get the money it needs and will not get it at the cost of other theatres.
"National" is a word dear to the Government, certainly the declensions thereof. I have opposed the word and my party has opposed it in its verbal form. I support it in its adjectival form. especially as a prefix to the word "theatre". We should like to see a National Theatre. We should like to see it stand on its own and not at the expense of any other theatrical venture. We do not want to see it at the expense of taking jobs from other actors.
Enough has been said about the parlous state of my trade union, Equity. A National Theatre would cost money; but so would the abolition of hare coursing and the many other measures, mostly destructive, which the Government have outlined in the Gracious Speech. I think we have enough destructive legislation. I should like to give my party's support to the Bill, the rejection of which would not only dissipate 120 years of forward thought but would cost hundreds of jobs and ambitions which are tied up with the project of a National Theatre.

8.36 p.m.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I have been very interested in the debate because it seems to me that, so far, it has been exceedingly civilised and has covered a great deal of ground. There seems a great element of agreement between the various parties on the things they do not want to see happen to the National Theatre. But I have been a little thrown by the rather happy assumption that the Bill will solve all the difficulties in actually creating the National Theatre. I remind the House that the building is not completed. We have heard from the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) some of the difficulties that have been encountered up to this point in the production of the building.
When we talk about finance, we have not yet taken on board the simple fact that if one throws out a timetable for a

major company such as this, one damages its economies in a fundamental way. If one has planned to have a company of over 120 and engaged a number of actors—if they are very good, they will be held to contracts for a considerable time ahead—one has definite financial commitments.
The situation is that, because the National Theatre is still not ready and does not have an official completion date, far from building up the administrative staff, the stage hands and the acting company, the National Theatre is now cutting back on the number of people employed.
Why is this theatre so late? There are always a number of reasons to be taken into account, but I was appalled to hear my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State say that it is for the National Theatre Board to say when it is to open. It is easy to be wise after the event and say that the actual building of the theatre should have been left to the people who would run it, but it seems extraordinarily odd that we have this division of responsibility so that one board is responsible for the building and another board will be required to run the theatre. This has caused considerable difficulty. The Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss), mentioned the problems that will be encountered by other theatres simply in the practical realm of stagehands and members of NATKE who work for the National Theatre.
Those of us who work in any branch of entertainment know only too well that NATKE is one of the unions which in the past two years has been faced with appalling redundancies. It has a number of members covering all the categories my right hon. Friend mentioned who are desperately in need of employment. If there is an easy method of attracting them to a new theatre, one suspects that this is not unconnected with the wage levels that are paid elsewhere in the country. I hope, therefore, that he will not be too misled by the propaganda being used when many of us feel that there are quite enough technicians available who would welcome employment and who are facing considerable difficulties outside.
The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) made an unprovoked


and unwarranted attack upon my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. If there is one Member of this House who does not need to be reminded of the problems of Equity it is my hon. Friend. He has spent a great deal of his working life not only actively promoting the interests of actors but in doing everything possible to create better conditions for the live theatre and in helping the theatre as a whole to expand.
To threaten my hon. Friend that, unless the Government come up with all the amounts of money that we have been talking about tonight, we shall know that he has failed is quite unwarranted. I have known him for a long time and always found him a kind, good, honest man. Perhaps one should say that in Whitehall, in any Government, any Minister of the Arts should not be a good, honest, kind and reliable man. That is one of the difficulties that we have had to face. I would say to the hon. Member for Chelmsford that we hope to have his active support in asking for the kind of money that we need for the Arts Council grant when it comes up for examination by the House.
I confess I have a slight reservation. Any hon. Gentleman who seeks to speak for the arts who appears in an imperial purple shirt and a burgundy tie at the same time seems to be not necessarily the sort that one can automatically appoint.

Mr. Freud: Will the hon. Lady suggest what a spokesman for the arts should wear?

Mrs. Dunwoody: At the moment it would seem to be a fig-leaf, but, given the figures of some of my fellow politicians, I hope I shall not be thought to be making a political attack if I say I prefer to see them in the shapeless suits they normally affect.
Someone has to ask some hard questions. Why is the National Theatre so late? When will it be completed? Will it be even later? Her Majesty the Queen had graciously consented to open the theatre next spring, yet the theatre company now appears to have no idea when it will go into operation. It has budgeted on the assumption that there would be 2,800 seats, and we should remember that the Old Vic has only 750 seats. If

the forward projection had been done on the basis of getting money from 2,500 seats, there would be considerable difficulty in having to stay with a theatre capable of seating a much smaller number.
Where will the provision for the administration come from? My hon. Friend will have to take that on board, much as I deplore the bitchiness of some members of the profession elsewhere in suggesting that the National Theatre could be funded only by taking money from other theatres. Merely to stand empty these three theatres will require more than £1 million in administration costs. So far as one can see, no provision has been made either in the Arts Council budget or anywhere else for that money to be found. It is hopeless to expect a theatre to be able to carry on unless those figures are substantiated by a considerable grant.
No one this evening has mentioned a fact about the National Theatre which is tremendously important to me. I am exceedingly lucky in my constituency. We have a live theatre which is loosely referred to as a "Victorian gem", which means that it needs a considerable amount of money for renovation, but it is a very nice theatre and it has a young and lively company. The director of the National Theatre has made it plain that one of the things he most hopes to do is to instigate a system whereby provincial companies can come to one or other of the London theatres and put on productions which they find successful in their own areas.
I should like to cite the original play that was done on the closing of the Shelton works. It was very popular at Stoke and was strongly supported by the people in the area. It was the best kind of live theatre because it arose from something that was important to the people. It was put into the most marvellously artistic terms and has been a very great success. I should have liked to see that put on the stage in London. [Interruption.] I hope that if the hon. Member for Isle of Ely is going to barrack me, he will do it so that I can hear him. It would help.
When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State replies, even if he can not assure us that the money is already


earmarked for the new theatre and for its administration, I hope he will not listen to the suggestion that one can hive off one or two prestige-type projects and put them into a special category. I disagree very firmly with that and I would strongly resist any attempt to put such a measure through the House. The theatre in this country must belong to everyone. It should not be a middle-class prerogative. It ceased to have its real impact when it became very much the province of those who could afford to come to London and pay for very expensive seats. We want to go back to the time when it was of general interest to everyone, not to go on to the time when it has become an esoteric interest for a very small section of the population.
I hope that the National Theatre will be in operation as soon as possible. I hope that the extraordinary limbo in which the company now finds itself will be dealt with as soon as possible. Is the company to be built up? If actors and actresses of the calibre of Peggy Ashcroft and Ralph Richardson are having to say reluctantly that, although they have agreed to come to the National, they have other contractual obligations which they must fulfil and they are now not sure whether they will be able to play on the dates that were originally mooted, the theatre will start at a considerable disadvantage.
The gestation period for elephants is said to be two years. The gestation period of this theatre has been a great deal longer than that. We must take exceeding care that the propaganda currently being put out suggesting that even before it opens its doors the National Theatre has become a white elephant is refuted in every way that we can refute it in this House. It will be a centre of live theatre. It will be an exciting project. It will provide a great many jobs and a great many opportunities for people in the industry who at the moment are sadly lacking in this kind of chance. But it will do that only if we are realistic. If we in the House accept that money has to be found for this kind of project, it should be given all the support that we can possibly give it now.
If we simply provide yet more money but put no pressure on the builders to get the building finished, occupied and working, we shall fail in our job. If

when it is working we do not make provision for its real costs, we shall fail in our job. I do not believe that it is my hon. Friend's intention ever to let that happen. He does not need to worry about the delicate dances of the hon. Member for Chelmsford, but he ought to be concerned about some of us who will be breathing rather loudly down his neck.

8.48 p.m.

Sir Anthony Meyer: I fully share and sympathise with the impatience—indeed, the exasperation—of the hon. Lady the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) over the delays in bringing this project to final fruition.
I have in a very humble way for the whole of my adult life been associated with this project. It was my grandfather who provided the sum of money necessary to keep alive in practical terms the ideas of men such as Sir Israel Gollancz, Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville Barker and others when they put forward the idea of a National Theatre. During the decades of official and public indifference which followed, it was only because of the help which my grandfather gave, and the persistent vision of a small handful of people, that the project remained alive.
At that stage there was a great deal of controversy whether a building was necessary to the project at all. I am convinced that without a building a National Theatre is a project which will be allowed simply to die in periods of great financial stringency, and even if only as a concrete symbol I am convinced that a building is necessary. I am sure that we are fortunate to have such a magnificent building as the one which is now, at any rate outwardly, approaching completion on the South Bank. I confess to having only a qualified enthusiasm for the texture of what one might call the pre-stained concrete in which it is built. But from the point of view of the outline, design and interior, it seems absolutely magnificent.
Those who were lucky enough to be present at that very exciting, and also very windy, topping-out ceremony may recall that, despite a very eloquent speech by Lord Olivier, the undoubted star of the occasion was the operator of the mobile crane, who had to lower a bucket of wet concrete in a very high wind on


to a roof which was packed like a sardine tin and in which there was a space of about 18in square left vacant in the middle to receive the concrete bucket. He lowered it absolutely precisely, without a moment's hesitation, to one of the loudest theatrical ovations that I have ever listened to.
The project nearly faltered and died in the 1920s and 1930s. I must pay tribute to the post-war Labour Government, which was the first Government to give concrete help in financial terms to the project. I want to pay tribute—which I was not able to do when the Bill was last discussed because I had 'flu at the time—to one man who, perhaps more than any other, carried the burden of the day in the difficult years, particularly during and after the last war, and that is the late Oliver Lyttelton, later Lord Chandos, once the hon. Member for Aldershot. He used his very great talents, both as an administrator, politician and man of the arts, to negotiate and wheedle and bully in order to get the project adopted. It was he who talked the post-war Labour Government into producing what was then a very large sum of money, and who then negotiated with the LCC, and later with the GLC, the provision of that admirable site on the South Bank.
It turned out to be the wrong site. Some may recall that the foundation stone was laid—I am not quite sure where it now is—in the wrong place. When the Queen Mother—the Queen at the time—was informed that it had been laid in the wrong place and that it would be necessary to move it and asked whether she minded, her reply was that she did not mind a bit, and she could always come along in one of her crinoline dresses to conceal the operation of moving it to where the proper site would now be. Now the site has been chosen, and a very good site it is, too. The building is an essential part of the whole project.
Going back to Lord Chandos and to a point that has been raised about the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, not only did he talk the Government and London County Council into supporting it but he also undertook the very difficult task of trying to persuade both the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company into becoming part of the project. He suc-

ceeded with the Old Vic, not without difficulties. One of the most formidable difficulties was the lady who was then the patron saint of the Liberal Party, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, who held very strongly to the view that the Old Vic ought to maintain its independence.

Mr. Freud: Would the hon. Gentleman like to say that again?

Sir A. Meyer: I was referring to the erstwhile saint of the Liberal Party, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, who held the very strong view that the Old Vic should maintain its independence inviolate. At one committee meeting after another she stuck very firmly to this point of view. Eventually Lord Chandos decided that he would take a leaf out of the book of certain elements in the Labour Party, and this normally most ruthless and efficient of chairmen used to conduct our proceedings with such intolerable dilatoriness, inefficiency and irrelevance, that ultimately Lady Violet was driven to total fury, got up, said, "I cannot waste my time here any longer" and flung out of the room, whereupon Lord Chandos concluded the rest of the business very briskly in the remaining five minutes.
In this way the union with the Old Vic was satisfactorily brought about. Unfortunately, what could not be brought about was the union with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I still think it was a great pity that this was not achieved, and I believe that one day it may be possible. It may one day be necessary to try to bring this about.
If financial stringency is such that it becomes necessary to cut down on running costs, I have a nasty sort of feeling that this will be the kind of solution that will be forced upon us. If so, it does not necessarily mean that there will be redundancies either among actors or stage hands. After all, the National Theatre Company needs to be a very large company, and by merging the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company the eventual result might well be something stronger.
All I want to do this evening is to congratulate the Minister. Despite the rather reserved reception given to his proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), I think that he has done well, in the difficult financial circumstances in which we


find ourselves today, to maintain the project alive. He has a fierce battle ahead to keep it alive, and I can assure him of the support of all of us on this side of the House who value, as he does—as we all must—the priceless heritage of the drama. There is not all that much in this country today that is going as well as we should like, but undoubtedly we still maintain our absolute primacy in the dramatic arts, and we must make sure that we continue to do so.

8.57 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch: The strange thing about this debate is that no one so far has raised a voice against the National Theatre. I certainly do not seek to do so, but it is nevertheless strange in a debate that only one opinion has been expressed in the Chamber, and that in favour of the Bill. It is right that it should be, but the National Theatre, situated in London, is not the only part of the theatre and its life in Britain today.
The National Theatre, situated in the capital, is important for the very reason that the theatre is prospering in the regions and in the provinces as it is. Only last night, speaking to a very distinguished architect, I asked him what he had built lately, and he said, "I am working on a theatre in Warwick for the university." When I asked, "With about 450 seats?", he said, "No. It is much bigger. It is nearer 600." He told me that during the last four or five years he had built a theatre in Sheffield and one in Nottingham. In Canterbury, the smallest city in England, we have long had the Marlowe Theatre, so appropriately named, but in the last five years we have built a second theatre, the Gulbenkian, in the university.
That is the story of the progress of the theatre in our country. It is not happening only in London—it is happening all over the country, in the regions. It is a very important point to put in the scales as we talk so strongly today about the need for the National Theatre in the national centre of the theatre and drama—in the capital, in London.
What is worrying all of us tonight is that next Tuesday the Chancellor is coming to the House to present his Budget, the way having been prepared for him by the Leader of the House the other day in his closing speech in the debate on

the Address—the way having been prepared possibly for the Chancellor to wield an axe over some of these things that we feel we can no longer afford.
The Leader of the House went so far as to mention the arts. While we have the assurance from the Minister tonight that the National Theatre is to proceed, I am very worried lest in the aftermath of the realisation of what the forthcoming Budget means, the Government may have to turn their big guns on the Minister and say that the axe is to be held over the National Theatre, and perhaps the National Theatre will have to be put into mothballs.
As the hon. Lady the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) said, one of the dangerous aspects of the National Theatre at present is that it is not finished. It would be so much better if it were finished at this time before we have to consider cuts.
It has also been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) and many others that it is not only the capital cost which we are now having to concede and recommend should be increased but the need to ensure that there is sufficient money to enable the theatre to continue.
I know that many arguments will be raised, not only in the House, as to the need for the National Theatre to continue. We are all aficionados of the theatre here tonight, but there will be others in the House who will not feel so enthusiastic for this artistic project. There will be many people in the country who will place their priorities on things other than the arts after next Tuesday.
I therefore make a strong plea that in this debate it is not just an occasion for each of us to agree with the other, but an occasion for us to use this moment to say why we believe that the National Theatre should proceed and why, after it has been built and opened, it should proceed successfully and be sufficiently well supported.
I will not go further into the figures which have already been bandied about tonight about the minute amount of money we spend in this country on the arts and the theatre. One of my vivid memories is of what the Austrians did after the war. In Vienna they established as a first priority the building of the


State Opera House. No one can say that their priorities were wrong, because Vienna is still one of the great centres of opera in the world, not only of singers and conductors but of people who are interested in opera and are drawn to that city to see a great new opera house for the support of the love of opera.
I hope that there is no question of anyone saying that one of our greatest heritages, the theatre, should be put into mothballs and allowed to fend for itself. I believe most fervently that that National Theatre must go ahead.
I was interested to hear the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) and my hon. Friend the Member for Flint. West (Sir A. Meyer) speak about how long this project has been before us. It is something which I have lived with since I was a boy keenly interested in the stage. The idea of not having a national theatre was anathema to me when I was at school. It seems extraordinary that this country, the home of Shakespeare, the home of Kean and of so many great men of the theatre, drama and language should not have a national theatre; that we had to make do with the best that we could get. Admittedly, some of the theatres in London were great, because of the people and the actors and the plays performed there, and because of the atmosphere which the London theatres created.
The hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds), who I understand is not speaking tonight, could speak with more feeling than anyone about the atmosphere which the stage and theatre in London and the whole of the country are able to create. He has done much to help create it.
The National Theatre is a wonderful concept. It is the result of inspiration, not only from Lord Chandos, to whom I grudge no shred of praise, but also from within the theatre, led by Lord Olivier. I remember hearing him speak in a Committee room about the concept. What encouraged me was that this was not just the architect at work, or the engineers, or the GLC or the Government; the theatre was making its contribution to the very structure that it wanted to take part in creating.
The theatre and Lord Olivier have been fortunate, in having as the architect Denys

Lasdun who, in my opinion, is not only one of the greatest architects in Britain but certainly one of the leading architects in the world. I do not dislike the use of concrete. We have seen his work in the University of East Anglia and in the Royal College of Physicians on the outskirts of Regents Park. We are fortunate in having such a design.
At last, over 100 years since the idea was first mooted, we are to have a building worthy of one of our greatest arts, one of our greatest contributions to the heritage of western man—drama and the theatre. It is a great concept. It is based on the essential need in the live theatre for contact between the actor and the audience.
No one in the three theatres in the National Theatre will be more than 65 ft. from the stage. No one will be so far away from the stage that he will not be able to study the actor's face. Those were the words used by Lord Olivier when he spoke at the meeting to which I referred. The essence of the live theatre is that the audience should play a part in the production of the atmosphere created from the stage. The reality of the live stage is the contest between the performer and the audience. That is the union that must be developed if the acting is to come alive.
I maintain that it is only in such circumstances that the great moments of the theatre can be created. After all, the theatre is the birthplace of acting, from which have grown the cinema and the television play. We have all seen great films and television performances, but the memories that we most treasure, that grow rather than fade, are from our experience in the theatre when we have actually seen the play performed, felt the actor's power and heard the effect of his voice with our magnificent language. Such occasions can come only from the intimacy of the live theatre. That intimacy has been retained in the design of the National Theatre. That is why it is a big step forward and why I am desperately anxious that we should not let the axe fall on such an enormously important project.
I can remember so much from the days before the war when, as a schoolboy and a young man, I used to queue for the gallery. In old terms the price of a gallery ticket in those days was 1s. 6d., but what a feast one got for it. One could


hear and see Shakespeare and experience the beauty and drama of a theatrical production.
Britain is the centre of the art of acting and London is the centre of our theatrical life. We must provide a modern base in London to serve not just London and its tourists, though that is important, but the whole country. The National Theatre must fan out from its base and serve the regions, but it must also provide a home in London, the centre of our great artistic achievement, for those in the regions to visit and show their art. I believe that we need a revival in the arts.
I have heard much said in criticism of the New Statesman. In the latest edition of the New Statesman, however, there is a most interesting article by the director of the National Theatre, Peter Hall.

Mr. Cormack: He is for it.

Mr. Crouch: Naturally, but at least the editor allowed him to publish his article. Mr. Peter Hall believes also in reviving the arts. I shall close with this quotation, because it is most appropriate:
The beginning of the new National Theatre comes at a time when we are low in spirits. We need a reviving symbol. And the theatre is very alive and very necessary in times of crisis.
I do not think that I could use words any more effective than those.

9.12 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: I shall not detain the House for long. This has been a very interesting debate. It is very refreshing when the House can unite on a particular issue. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) referred with some criticism to the sartorial elegance of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). But I am glad that her hon. Friend on the Government Front Bench has his battledress on and is ready to go into action against the Gradgrinds of the Treasury.
Perhaps it is particularly appropriate that the Paymaster-General has entered the Chamber during the last few minutes. Cultured and civilised as he is, I am sure he will do all that he can to march shoulder to shoulder with the Minister responsible for the arts to make sure that this project and many others are not only

sustained but that the Government devote increasing attention to them.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, I am sorry that the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) will not be speaking in the debate tonight.

Mr. Faulds: The hon. Gentleman will tempt me to it.

Mr. Cormack: That is the object of my saying this. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is saving his skill to deliver the prologue when the National Theatre is finally opened. No one could do it with greater panache or a greater sense of the rhythm of the English language than he.
The words with which my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) ended his speech were extremely pertinent. In this House we frequently and quite glibly debate the expenditure of enormous sums of money. I believe that on Monday we shall be debating again the Channel Tunnel—the most expensive hole in history. No doubt before very much longer we shall be debating the new parliamentary building again. The House gave approval, less than a year ago, to the expenditure of £30 million to create a comfortable environment for ourselves.
We talk as though the money spent on the National Theatre is a vast sum. How perverted have our priorities become, how distorted our sense of values, when we can, with a nod and a wave, cheerfully bid farewell to countless millions of pounds of the nation's resources and yet, when it comes to the arts, which sustain and uplift the spirit of man, we think that we are being generous with a million pounds for historic buildings and a few million pounds for the theatre? Then we even pause and consider. I hope that the present Government will reconsider destroying at a stroke some of the priceless artistic heritage of this country with the threat of the wealth tax and all that that implies. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, quite rightly, would rule me out of order if I elaborated on that point, but my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford on the Opposition Front Bench referred to it and it bears repetition.
It seems to be commonly agreed that we are in a state of national crisis. At such a time we need more than ever to


be uplifted and inspired. We in this place have singularly failed to inspire people over the last few years. It is from the arts that many people get their solace and contentment, if they are able to get it anywhere. When the country faces some of its darkest days perhaps for decades, we ought to be determined to spend even more, relatively speaking, on the arts. I say "more, relatively speaking" because with £50 million one can do a vast amount when it comes to the arts. It is a small sum in the budget of the country but it is an enormous one in terms of the nation's heritage and culture.
There is a commercial side to this matter. It has been touched on by several of my hon. Friends—I say "honourable friends" advisedly—on both sides of the Chamber. Millions of tourists come to this country and they come more than ever for what Britain offers in the way of tradition, spectacle, heritage and history. One of the things that they are determined to do when they come to our capital city is to go to the theatre. The money that is attracted by the presence of a living theatre, something that is developing and enhancing our traditions, is enormous. We should never think that we are being munificent and subsidising something from which the country will get no return. The country will get an enormous return from a successful National Theatre, a return out of all proportion to the money we are talking about this evening.
There is one thing which I am just as concerned about as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) and the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud). It would be wrong in extolling the virtues of this project for us to forget the theatre in the provinces. I am particularly glad that the Lyttelton Theatre, part of this exciting project, will stage productions from Britain's regional theatres. There will be a degree of cross-fertilisation which can only benefit drama as a whole and our national artistic heritage.
Therefore, as we come, I hope, towards the close of the final chapter in the preliminary story of the National Theatre, I hope we shall be determined to make sure that it inherits one motto from a particular commercial theatre. When it is

opened let it carry, at least in our hearts and intentions, the motto "We never close", and let it always be there as a hallmark of Britain's artistic greatness and excellence.
I welcome the Bill and I hope that the Government will ensure that what we are doing tonight will be followed up in the future by every sum that is necessary to sustain this exciting and invigorating new project.

9.18 p.m.

Mrs. Renée Short: It is not often that the House has an opportunity to discuss the theatre and support for the arts, and I welcome the unity that the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) has referred to in the House on this issue. I apologise that I was delayed outside the House and so did not hear the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Minister. I would certainly support, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) in what she said about him, and all of us know he has worked extremely hard to get more support, financially and otherwise, for the arts. The whole House will support him in that.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) referred rightly to the support given by some other European Governments to opera, ballet and the theatre in their countries. It is true that every country in East and West Europe does a great deal more to support the arts than we do. We certainly get our theatre, opera and ballet for chicken feed. The support we give to the arts is a measly £17½ million or £18 million a year now. The figure has grown quite a lot since the noble Baroness Lee was the first Minister responsible for the arts some years ago. But it is a small amount for us to spend.
Of course, the small companies are concerned that the large companies and the Royal Shakespeare Company seem to get the lion's share of that money. I do not share the optimism of the hon. Member for Canterbury about the theatre in the provinces. I am most concerned that in many parts of the country theatres are in the doldrums. Theatres in the West End are closed because the money cannot be found by the commercial theatre to put plays on.
In many parts of the provinces theatres are playing to small audiences. Our job, on both sides of the House, is to do our utmost to try to stimulate interest and enthusiasm in the arts and the theatre among all sections of the community. Industry has a part to play here. It could, for instance, support theatres in the towns where it is situated by various methods, such as by taking block bookings which would be made available to employees. I believe that industry could help the theatre without the task becoming onerous.
We also have a great responsibility to stimulate interest in the theatre among young people. The teaching profession has a responsibility here, too. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would agree that there is a considerable task in this regard.
We ought to be able to persuade or cajole television companies to help. These companies cream off much of the talent that has been trained in our drama schools, which are among the best in the world. I support all that has been said by those hon. Members who have paid tribute to the standard of theatrical attainment in this country. We have the best actors and actresses in the world bar none, and we also have the best drama training.
It is a lamentable state of affairs that actors and actresses, after gaining eminence in the theatre, are creamed off by television companies and are seen, mostly, only on the small screen, earning a great deal more than they would in the theatre. Television ought to be persuaded—if it can be persuaded—to put something back by way of supporting the living theatre from which it gains so much. I am concerned about the state of the theatre in the provinces.
I support the director of the National Theatre in what he hopes to do when the theatre is completed. But I utter a word of warning. The idea that there must be cross-pollination in the theatre is both necessary and desirable. In this way good theatre in the regions, if supported by grants from the Arts Council, can be seen in London, but this will be an expensive exercise. Companies will need money if they are to come to London from the provinces. Accommodation

will have to be found for actors, who will also need to have extra subsistence allowances for living in London, and there will be other costs.
We all need to put as much pressure as we can on, I suppose, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure that money is channelled through the Arts Council to support the best of our theatre, ballet and opera in the provinces as well as in London.
The delay in the completion of the new National Theatre is of great concern. So is the escalation of costs, which are now more or less double what they were at the start of the project. I understand that sub-contractors are holding up the completion of the theatre. This is happening notably on the electrical side of the job. Much of the equipment is of a new type that has not been installed in any other theatre. This type of installation is expensive. Some of the work has been sub-contracted to small firms, and has proved to be more complicated technologically than the firms had expected. Some of these firms have had difficulty in coping with the work. Some do not have the resources to do what is required.
We want to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister about the completion date for the new National Theatre. The opening of the theatre has been postponed on a number of occasions, and the date of January 1975 has now been abandoned. If Her Majesty is to open the theatre, considerable advance notice will be required.
The longer that completion of the project is delayed the more expensive it will become. As delay continues, there are rising costs of all kinds.
It is in a way a rather depressing time to talk about the completion of the National Theatre, when all theatres in the country—both commercial and subsidised—are facing grossly inflated costs. Theatres are facing, I am thankful to say, the better salaries negotiated by Equity both for rehearsal and playing time, and productions costs have risen by around 40 per cent. in the last four months. The whole trend is towards increasing costs all the time.
Theatres are compensating in a way which is liable to reduce standards. They are concentrating on single-set plays because the alternative is expensive, and


on plays with three or four characters, which is depressing and restricting. It means that large plays, with 45 in the company, cannot be contemplated by the commercial theatre or the subsidised theatre. The production of Shakespeare is becoming prohibitive for all but the Royal Shakespeare Company. I agree with the hon. Member for Canterbury that it is a scandal that in this country, above all others, we have no permanent theatre in London playing Shakespeare. This is urgently needed. This is a difficult time and a difficult background, but I hope that our aspirations to see the National Theatre completed at the earliest possible moment will be carried out.
I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us about the completion date, and that we shall all be able to continue to press for more resources to be made available to support the arts.

9.28p.m.

Mr. Robert Banks: I am encouraged by the wide measure of agreement in the debate, and I hope that reports of this debate will serve as an encouragement to theatre throughout the country and to all those engaged in the National Theatre project. I also hope that it will help to lay the dust of the criticisms recently levelled against the National Theatre. There are a great number of people who are weary of the criticisms that arise whenever a national project reaches fruition. It is extraordinary that so many of our great projects end up with rival factions of people who try to do them down whenever they get the opportunity to do so.
Some people argue over the theatre's design. Surely it is too late to argue on that. Personally I think that the theatre displays a great strength and character, and the interior has a dramatic influence which is right and necessary for such a project. The design makes use of the magnificent position of the theatre and brings a new element of life to a hitherto dreary area of the Thames Embankment. My personal view is somewhat mixed as to the architectural merits of the building from the outside. We must accept that people have different views, but we must also accept that, once the building is a reality, criticism will do nothing but destroy.
It is argued that there are three theatres involved in the scheme which will command the attendance of too great a number of people to make the theatres viable. I do not share that view. It is a ridiculous assumption that in the great City of London there are not sufficient people who will be bothered to go to the quality of theatre we shall wish to see when these three theatres are operating.
The Olivier Theatre is to my mind a very fine theatre. I believe that there we have the potential of the greatest theatre in the world. It is full of innovation and has a stage technique which is unrivalled. The smaller Lyttelton Theatre is interesting because it will provide the London stage with repertory productions. Repertory deserves all the support it can get from London, and it will benefit by coming to London and by being acclaimed for its performances. At the same time we shall see touring companies from the National Theatre going out to all parts of the country to put on productions in our provincial theatres.
I want to make a plea to the Minister to give careful attention to capital projects which provincial theatres may wish to put in hand in the form of restaurants, coffee bars and so on in order to make their theatres more viable. Many are the complaints that people going to the theatre in the country cannot have a meal or partake of any refreshment apart from that offered in a crush bar. The economics of this show that, if it is possible to get in more people spending money and having meals in theatres, the result is not only a benefit to the theatre financially but greatly improved attendances.
Returning to the National Theatre, we hear the argument from many sections that it will involve about 100 people coming from the theatre in the form of technicians and so on working behind the scenes. We are talking about a relatively small number. But why is that a criticism when we are providing job opportunities, and remarkably good ones into the bargain? If the wages offered are higher than those agreed by other theatres—we have heard the controversy about that tonight—it is a matter for the theatres to agree between them.
The building is not yet completed, and delay in a national project of this scale


is harmful not only to the building industry, which is responsible for erecting the building, but starts the building off on the wrong foot. I hope that every conceivable effort will now be made to get the theatre complex completed in the soonest possible time. We know the problems of the building industry, the unemployment in it and the number of craftsmen available. If it is necessary to bring in additional staff to get the building completed as soon as possible, I hope that it will be done.
The financial side is crucially important. The Minister has given an undertaking, for which I am grateful, and we look forward to seeing the hard cash terms when they are announced.
I agree heartily with my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) that the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company should be lumped together but accounted separately. These are great national projects. I believe that there would be considerable merit in doing this because it would take away the aura of suspicion that provincial theatre has that too much money will be channelled not only into the National Theatre but into the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company as well. This is a genuine anxiety which needs rectifying.
In these times of dire inflation anxiety goes right across the board, not only in the theatre but in every section of the community. The taxpayers, rightly, will want to see value for their money when the sums are announced. But let us look on the positive side to what we are achieving with the National Theatre. I am happy to endorse what has been said already—that we shall have an internationally famous theatre complex which will put London substantially at the head of the league of theatrical centres. We should be rightly proud of having a building which offers that, in addition to the high regard that we all—especially tourists—have today for the theatre in London. We shall be fixing London with an asset which will direct this focus of attention on London as the centre of theatre and the arts.
I am always surprised how every tourist one meets invariably comes round

to looking forward to going to the theatre in London. When the National Theatre is open and under way, I hope that our publicity abroad will draw tourists from all parts of the world to come and see it for themselves. It is essentially important that we create the right aura and technique for the theatre in making it attractive for people to see. In an inflation crisis we must not lose sight of our pursuit of art and excellence and in so doing bring our civilisation closer to the truth that art reveals.

9.36 p.m.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: To the regret of the House, I must admit that I am a creature easily tempted. As the only representative present of what I believe is often thought of as the second oldest profession in the world, may I briefly make one or two comments, as hon. Members clearly feel that I should be taking part in the debate.
I had not intended to speak, for two reasons. The first is simply that there is an excellent dinner awaiting me in exquisite company and the longer we sit here the more quickly it goes to ruin. The second reason is that I normally prefer to speak only in my party's praises and I must admit to a certain lack of happiness in these times of financial stringency about the apparent prospects of the arts under the present Labour Government's attitude towards them.
I share the general feeling abroad in the House tonight that there are grave dangers, not only for this specific project, such as certain curtailments, perhaps, in the National Theatre project, but for the general funding of the arts in the country today. We fund them so miserably as it is that any diminution of that funding, any dampening down, would be desperately depressing.
I urge my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to consider the possibility of raising money for the arts—the idea has been raised before and I am a strong supporter of it—in these times of national stringency, by requiring local authorities to impose a mandatory rate for art support purposes. If my memory serves me aright, I think that a 2p rate throughout the country would realise an amount in the neighbourhood of £50 million. That would lead roughly to an immediate doubling of the funding available for art purposes throughout the country.
I seriously urge my hon. Friend to consider the suggestion. I do not see any other way of getting arts activities of all sorts working, not only in the Metropolis, where it is easier because there is a larger audience demanding them, but in all the regions. Had the dice fallen another way and had the job been mine, I should have been eager to examine and, I hope, to carry into practice the requirement for a mandatory funding of the arts by a local authority rate. I am profoundly worried—as I think the rest of the House is—by the comments of the Lord President the other night. I did not hear the speech—

Mr. Cormack: The hon. Member was lucky.

Mr. Faulds: —because the Lord President is not an orator to whose effusions I rush to listen. But I read the speech and if what HANSARD reported is true—I have no reason to doubt that it is—I think my hon. Friend on the Front Bench will have to flex considerably more political muscle than he has done so far in matters of funding the arts. I wish him well if he is to manage to indulge in this exercise because, as other hon. Members have said tonight, in the period we shall have to go through in the next few years—I do not think we shall get out of this economic crisis quite as easily and as quickly as some of us hope—we shall experience some dismal dark passages. We need the sustenance of the arts and a much more general spread of that sustenance throughout the country.
The provision of arts factilities, the enjoyment of the arts, the enormous enrichment and enhancement they bring to life—the tragedy is that far too many of our people have never sniffed these wonders. They have never sensed the riches available. To do that job properly we have to consider not diminishing or keeping static the amounts of money available to the arts but enormously increasing them. I hope that my hon. Friend flexes that political muscle and achieves this exercise, because the folk of the country badly need it.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: With the permission of the House, I shall speak again in reply to what has been a useful, most informative and good

humoured debate. That latter characteristic is what saved the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). He is a little sharp occasionally but is saved by his capacity also to make jokes, so that we accept his sharper points since he usually puts the House into a good humour. I know that he has never been able to forget that he spent a few short weeks as Minister responsible for the arts which, I think, sharpens the barb of his asperity. It was only a few short weeks, and the love which he expressed for the position was possibly a little unrequited, which makes it more difficult for him to recognise that we are now on different sides of the House.
The hon. Gentleman made one or two specific points with which I shall endeavour to deal. First, I am particularly fortunate as Minister responsible for the arts to have civilised Treasury colleagues. I recall seeing the Paymaster-General more than once in a theatre, and once in an opera house. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the Chief Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are all men who from time to time enjoy the arts and go to the theatre. Therefore, I am fortunate because I know that when I talk to them about my problems they will do their best to assist me to get over those difficulties.
I must be careful how I speak. I am just this side of a Budget and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be talking to us before long. As he has been nudged one way already it would ill become me to nudge him the other way tonight, but I have confidence that the interest and concern for the arts in general and for the National Theatre in particular which has been expressed on both sides of the House is felt very strongly throughout the Government, particularly in some quarters where it counts.
I am not by any means pessimistic, but it would be wrong for me to suggest to the House that there is any possibility of lifting the arts out of the general economy of the country and saying "They are special, they do not count. The arts are different and can be regarded in a different form from anything else". The impracticability of that view can be demonstrated. The arts spread over; sport is adjacent. Where do the arts finish and the crafts start?
It is very difficult to pick any particular recipient of State support and say that it is to be excluded from the general restrictions. Under the impetus of a Labour Government, in 10 years the support for the arts went up from a miserable £2 million, as it was under the Conservative Government in 1963, to a figure now approaching £20 million.

Mr. Cormack: Chicken feed.

Mr. Jenkins: Chicken feed certainly, but 10 times the sort of chicken feed it was 10 years ago when the hon. Gentleman's party was in power.
The record of Labour Governments is, therefore, not only the appointment of a Minister responsible for the arts who has the job of fighting for the arts within the Government. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. When the hon. Member for Chelmsford, who speaks for the Opposition Front Bench, succeeded to the position of Minister for the arts, the 10 per cent. increase which had been made over several years was cut to 3 per cent. He did nothing whatever about that cut. He tolerated the consequences of the policies of his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the demon Barber as he was called in those days. He did nothing whatever about it. The hon. Gentleman was a total loss in the 10 weeks he spent as Minister for the arts.

Mr. Cormack: I do not think that competition in parsimony will get us anywhere. If the hon. Gentleman can suggest that £20 million is a sum to be proud of when we have just spent almost half the cost of the National Theatre on our car park, he ought to think again.

Mr. Jenkins: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the fact that we are not spending enough on the arts. I am not suggesting for one moment that we shall not spend a great deal more. I am saying that our achievement during the last 10 years has been considerable. The whole of the money is not contained in the amount of money which the Government fund to the Arts Council. Expenditure on the arts in my Department, for example, amounts to £50 million. Local authorities spend at least the same spread over the country. So the idea that we are an extremely backward coun-

try in support for the arts is true, but not by any means as true as it was.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am drawn to my feet by the partial account which the hon. Gentleman has given of the financing of the arts. The facts are that under the last Conservative Government, until the emergency measures of last November, there was an increase in the arts budget of 10 per cent. in real terms per year. It was the highest sustained increase in the history of the Department. Even when the emergency measures were entered into, there was no absolute cut in the arts budget. What there was was a cut in the rate of increase. It still went up by 3 per cent. We are asking the hon. Gentleman to do the same or better, and if he can do that we shall be the first to congratulate him. But his job is to get that increase and not put the Treasury argument by saying that if we get this for the arts, people will ask it for sports and so on. That is an argument for the Treasury, not an argument for the hon. Gentleman. Let him speak up for the arts.

Mr. Jenkins: It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to go on like that, but when he inherited—the 10 per cent. per annum rate of increase had been going on for many years—a cut in the rate of growth from 10 per cent. to 3 per cent. he did nothing whatever about it.
As the hon. Gentleman seems to imagine that I am always opposing his noble Friend Lord Eccles, I should like to pay a tribute to Lord Eccles. Although I had criticism of Lord Eccles—as did many of us—about some of his actions as Minister responsible for the arts, notably the museum charges, it is true that for many years the Conservative Party maintained the 10 per cent. real increase instituted under the Labour Government of 1964–70 until the hon. Gentleman appeared on the scene.
Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) that I shall certainly do my best, but whether I am capable of deploying the amount of political muscle that he might deploy remains to be seen. I myself feel that these things are probably best dealt with by discussion with one's colleagues in the Government, and I think we shall suceed in putting the case of the arts firmly, clearly and, I trust, successfully.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), who came to see me just now to say that she had to go, had a considerable point—which other Members have mentioned—about the problem of the theatre in the regions. She asked whether there would be some interchange between the National Theatre and theatres outside London. I think that that will be the case and that the Cottesloe Theatre will be used in some degree for this purpose.
While I am on this subject, I want to emphasise that there is no intention to put the theatre into mothballs. It is the full intention of the Government—I am satisfied that the same goes for the Arts Council and the theatre authorities themselves—that the theatres shall be put into full use and maintained in full use.
The hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Banks) made a good point when he suggested that regional theatres sometimes lacked proper facilities which people now expect. People have the idea that it ought now to be possible to get a meal and have a drink in comfort, and this is not always the case in regional theatres. The fact that we are concentrating tonight upon the National Theatre does not mean that it will be funded at the expense of the regional theatre.
I have been to the Marlowe Theatre more than once. It does not have every conceivable facility which one might wish for, but nevertheless some very good work is done there. This illustrates the point I made earlier that, while all of us want to see these superb facilities which the National Theatre is going to bring to us, it is still possible to work elsewhere with less than those facilities.

Sir A. Meyer: While the hon. Gentleman is on that point, I should like to ask him a related question, which will also be of interest to the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud). Can he give some assurance that, so far as lies in his power, the firm which is responsible for the catering at the Royal Festival Hall will not be allowed anywhere near the National Theatre?

Mr. Jenkins: There is perhaps some misunderstanding about the functions of the Department responsible for the arts. It is not its job to look after who does the catering. Indeed, if intervention to

such a degree were to take place it would, quite properly, be resented, just as it would be resented if anyone tried to suggest what production should take place in any particular theatre.
Several hon. Members have asked why it is not possible for the Government to quote now the final cost of the project in an exact form. The reason is that the additional cost will be incurred in completing the project over the next 18 months or so. Therefore, one cannot forecast exactly what will happen.
I can, however, say something that I hope will be of some comfort to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody), for whose contribution I was most grateful. It is hoped that the main contractors will be out of the building in the early part of the New Year. It is, therefore, my personal expectation—I make clear that it is my personal expectation—that the theatre will become available for use in a different way from what was envisaged.
Hon. Members will recall that the proposal was that Her Majesty the Queen should open the building and that, since everything would not be ready, there would be a sort of interregnum after which productions would take place. I understand that the opposite is now proposed. The idea is that the theatre shall come into use and that the official opening shall indeed follow a period in which the theatre has been brought into use. This is not unusual.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The question is not simply when the official opening will be held. If the company has been built up with a specific timetable, and if the whole of its forward planning has been based on a particular opening date, either from the point of view of contracts or from that of people physically employed in the theatre, my hon. Friend will understand that it is tremendously important that there should be a definite date. It does not matter if that date is two years ahead, though God forfend that it should be so, but it must be a definite date.

Mr. Jenkins: I take the point. I think that the director of the theatre is fully informed of the facts and recognises the need for a definite date. But it is possible to recruit a company over a period. The


company will begin to be recruited over a period of time and I think we shall have a situation which is not what we would have desired. We wanted the theatre opened in April, but I think the theatre will become available in the very near future. I am sorry that it is not possible for me to give a firm date now.

Mr. Freud: Will the Minister bear in mind that the National Theatre has already had six definite dates? I should have thought that the important thing was to go ahead without a definite date.

Mr. Jenkins: This is what I am suggesting will happen.
The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) raised the question of comparative costs. The cost of the Sydney Opera House was £57 million, a substantially greater cost than the one we are contemplating. The cost of a 400,000 ton oil tanker is £33 million, the cost of a single Boeing aircraft is almost the same as the cost of the National Theatre—between £11 million and £13 million.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) is right to say that we are making a tremendous fuss about what is relatively not such a huge amount, with a special Act of Parliament and so on. All the apparatus with which we surround the expenditure of this relatively small sum make it seem substantially more than it is.
The hon. Member for Canterbury also touched on the question of the support for the arts in other countries. He is quite right in saying that the state of opera in Vienna is of great significance and great excellence. But Vienna is not entirely without problems. Visits have been made to our office in London by officials from Vienna with complaints at their having to support national collections as great as, or greater than, those in London on an annual budget of £2 million, compared with the £10 million which we devote to that purpose, and with a central office staff of three people. They came to visit us to obtain advice on how they might tackle their problems.
I think, therefore, that we are now beginning to realise the importance of the arts and of getting to a position in which we can perhaps teach others some things about them from time to time.

Mr. Crouch: The point that I was making was not so much the maintenance of opera in Vienna—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the National Theatre Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour—[Mr. Dormand]

Question again proposed,That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Crouch: The point that I was making was not so much the maintenance of opera in Vienna as the fact that the Austrians initiated a programme to rebuild the great opera house in Vienna at a time when their country had been devastated by war and yet they gave it top priority.

Mr. Jenkins: I took the point, but it gave me the opportunity of getting in the point that I wanted to make.
I am grateful for what was said by the hon. Member for Flint, West (Sir A. Meyer). I should like to reciprocate by agreeing about the great importance of the contribution by Oliver Lyttelton to the National Theatre project which is recognised by naming one of the auditoria after him. I agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. There is no intention of bringing about a merger between the two. I would be wholly opposed to any such proposal. I am unable to agree with the hon. Member who suggested that.
My right hon. Friend the Members for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) made a number of points with which I am in considerable agreement. After spending a lifetime squeezing wages out of reluctant employers on behalf of actors, I think that I shall find my Treasury colleagues a relative pushover. I hope that we shall have no difficulty in getting sufficient money to enable us to proceed with matters within the context of the general economic situation from which none of us can escape.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) is a little confused about the functions of the Minister responsible for the arts. I think that he was trying to take me into a more detailed area of opinion than it would be proper for me


to go. I cannot and should not seek to usurp the functions of the Arts Council, still less those of the National Theatre Board. I take note of what the hon. Gentleman said. However, I hope that he will forgive me if I refrain from entering into any detailed opinion on the points that he made. They will be recorded in HANSARD and no doubt note will be taken of them by the people who are directly concerned.
I was particularly interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe refer to the remarkable work done by the Victoria Theatre in Stoke. It is a good example of what can be done on a fairly small budget outside London. It is fair to point out that the seat price in Stoke receives from the Arts Council about the same support per box office pound, though on a smaller level, as the National Theatre.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Will my hon. Friend also pay tribute to the theatre in Crewe, not just in Stoke?

Mr. Jenkins: Indeed. "Shelton" was produced originally in Stoke and then in Crewe. That is why I mentioned Stoke first. I agree that Crewe is no less important than Stoke. From my hon. Friend's point of view it is no doubt more important.
The suggestion that the National Theatre will drain other theatres of their manpower has been somewhat exaggerated. I do not think we need bother too much about that. There is a problem in that at present there is a particular shortage of stage technicians. The National Theatre is coming to fruition when there are certain difficulties in this area. Peter Hall has replied in some detail to this criticism, and it is somewhat exaggerated.
I have indicated to the House that the Government are fully aware of the problem of running costs and that we have no intention of allowing this great new project to run down for lack of ability to maintain itself. The Arts Council is the body which will determine this matter. Personally I am not much taken with the idea of a separate Vote for the large companies. A separation which might be looked at again is the separation between capital expenditure, on the one hand, and production expenditure on the other. That might be a very fruitful examination. It is particularly noteworthy

in the National Theatre that much of the expenditure is continuing expenditure consequent on the building, quite separate from the question of expenditure relating to the production. Therefore, that sort of separation would be a more fruitful area for examination and consideration than would be an attempt to set up a separate group, although that in itself I would not exclude from examination.
A number of other points were made but some of them were not particularly relevant to the National Theatre. I think that at this time of night the House would thank me if I drew my speech to a close.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Two very important questions have not been answered. One was about the future of the Old Vic, which is intimately connected with the National Theatre. The other was about the future of the Young Vic. We should all be grateful if the Minister gave us briefly his views on these two vitally important questions.

Mr. Jenkins: It was my intention to do so. I was about to conclude by referring to those two points and a third point that was raised about the equipment of the National Theatre.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: We should be grateful for that information too.

Mr. Jenkins: The question of the equipment is unlikely to arise in the figures given. The total figures include the equipment. The figures placed before the House are total, complete and full. Therefore, it is unlikely that we shall have to go beyond that level at all.
There has been no decision about the Old Vic. The Young Vic might possibly use it, but nothing has been finally settled and this matter is still under consideration. Therefore, this means in turn that the Young Vic too is unsettled. If the Young Vic went into the Old Vic, that would solve two problems. There is some question that this may be the case, but it has not been decided upon. It is still under active discussion.

Mr. Strauss: May I ask a question before the decision is made? Once a decision is made it is no good trying to bring persuasion to bear. There have been arguments about the Old Vic. I am particularly interested in it. It is in


my constituency and I never miss some performance there. I am anxious that my hon. Friend the Minister should keep an open mind in the controversy about whether the Old Vic should continue as a theatre, with its old traditions, or be turned into an opera house or a ballet house, with a huge portion taken out of the stalls, which would be deplorable. There is a very strong case for maintaining the Old Vic as a theatre, as it has been for a long time, and possibly making it is a Shakspere theatre, as has been suggested.

Mr. Jenkins: I shall certainly bear in mind those points. I go rather further than that and say that I shall specifically make it my business to look into the matter that my right hon. Friend has suggested to ascertain the position.
The debate has illustrated that there is a very profound interest in the House about the future of the National Theatre. It is quite right that the debate has rather gone beyond consideration of the National Theatre itself. It is possible that this National Theatre may yet prove to be the crown in the British artistic renaissance which it has been suggested may be coming about and that we may be living in our time at the height of it.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Dormand.]

Committee tomorrow.

NATIONAL THEATRE [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified.

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to remove the limits imposed by the National Theatre Act 1949 on the contributions which may be made under that Act towards the cost of erecting and equipping a national theatre, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the said Act of the present Session in the contributions,

towards the cost of erecting and equipping a national theatre, made under the said Act of 1949 out of money so provided.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

MEMBERS' INTERESTS (DECLARATION)

Ordered,
That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the arrangements to be made pursuant to the Resolutions of the House of 22nd May in the last Parliament relative to the declaration of Members' interests and the registration thereof, and, in particular:

(a) what classes of pecuniary interest or other benefit are to be disclosed;
(b) how the register should be compiled and maintained and what arrangements should be made for public access thereto;
(c) how the resolutions relating to declaration and registration should be enforced;
(d) what classes of person (if any) other than Members ought to be required to register;

and to make recommendations upon these and any other matters which are relevant to the implementation of the said Resolutions.

Ordered,
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; to report from time to time; and to report from time to time the Minutes of the Evidence taken before them and Memoranda submitted to them.

Ordered,
That the Committee do consist of Fourteen Members. And the Committee was nominated of Mr. Cant, Mr. Nicholas Edwards, Mr. Hall-Davis, Sir Michael Havers, Mr. Sydney Irving, Mr. Colin Jackson, Mr. Simon Mahon, Mr. Angus Maude, Mr. Arthur Palmer. Mr. James Prior, Mr. Nigel Spearing, and Mr. Frederick Willey.

Ordered,
That Five be the Quorum of the Committee.

Ordered,
That the Committee shall report to the House, within the shortest reasonable period, their recommendations, especially with regard to paragraphs (a),(b) and (c).

Ordered,
That the Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Members' Interests (Declaration) in the last Parliament and reported by them to the House on 29th July be referred to the Committee. [Mr. Walter Harrison.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed,That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dormand.]

NATIONAL SAVINGS STAMP

10.10 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I am glad to have this opportunity of firing the opening shot in what I assure the Minister and his advisers will be a long battle. I hope that he will accept from me that blunt speaking means no discourtesy to him. I am determined to get the decision to phase out the national savings stamp reversed. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessors twice had to reprieve the sixpence that they tried to get rid of.
The national savings stamp goes back to the First World War, and it provides a most valuable weapon in the battle we are all trying to fight. The DNS annual reports show that the sale of stamps in 1971 was £83 million. That had risen by 1974 to £118 million. The management expenses rose over that same period from £4·85 million to £8·97 million. It is fair to say that these stamps represent interest-free borrowing by the Government from the public. It is also right to say that the Government are paying at the moment between 11 and 11½ per cent. for short-term borrowing. I make 11 per cent. on £53 million about £5·8 million. That is left in the hands of the public. It is the interest the Government does not have to meet because stamps are interest-free, and this must be deducted from the management expenses in order to arrive at the net cost of the stamp scheme to the Government, which is about £3 million a year. If a stamp had been introduced to pay for television licences its cost would have to be taken into account in calculating what the Government might possibly pay.
The first hint that the stamp might go was, clearly, not a ministerial hint. It came from the recesses of the Treasury, and it came at the time the Page Report was published. I took a deputation to see the then Minister of State, and at that stage the petition had 120,000 signatures, and the number has since risen to nearly

190,000. I attacked the decision then. I thought it was a particularly foolish one. I now go on to attack the decision that the present Government have taken. I do not regard this as a political issue because Ministers of both major parties have fallen for the Treasury arguments.
The Paymaster-General, in a letter on 31st October to Mrs. Perkins, talks about the importance attached to the social practice, and says that the decision to abolish the stamp was not based solely on economic considerations. He said:
I must emphasise that my primary consideration was the fact that the stamp is a bad buy for the saver; it is not, and cannot practicably be, a security which carries interest and thus give a reward to the saver for deferring consumption.
But it was never meant to be, and anyone connected with savings knows that. It is meant to be the first step on the road to saving, and anyone who has ever collected door to door as I have—perhaps the Minister has not had the chance or the honour—will know that one never tries to kid people that by buying national savings stamps they will earn any interest. I believe that the right job for the national savings movement is to encourage purchase of security, and to get people along the proper road towards national savings.
I wish to quote some distinguished people who go along with the idea that the national savings stamp is extremely important. One of the most important people that I can quote is Mr. George Woodcock, who is not unknown to the Paymaster-General. Mr. Woodcock said at a conference of the National Savings Committee:
And then in terms of our securities we have everything from the stamp, which has been much criticised, but which is essential to us; it is one of our unique responsibilities and our unique functions".
He repeats:
It is an essential part of us. It enables us to offer the small saver everything from the humble stamp to Save-As-You-Earn.
What does the Paymaster-General have to say about all this? He made an interesting, though long, speech in Glasgow. I think that he had to rewrite it in view of the leak that had taken place. I shall quote one or two extracts from the speech to show the fallacy of the arguments that were being adduced for him.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the stamp "is expensive to the Government". I can show that it is not expensive to the Government and that the cost is probably less than the cost of the proposed television stamp. He said that the stamp made a negligible contribution to Government finances. It was never intended primarily to finance the Government. The stamp leads into savings for those who would not otherwise acquire the habit.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the stamp was "bad for the saver", "insecure" and paid no interest. This ignores the advantages of familiarity, simplicity and convenience. The stamp can be readily encashed, and it provides convertibility to a permanent form of saving and leads to the saving habit.
As a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trustee Savings Bank movement I can say that the TSB regards the savings stamp as very important. As regards the case for its abolition, the Government have been criticised for giving an inadequate return on savings securities in view of the rate of inflation. In the case of the stamp the return is negative. This criticism, however, cannot be directed at the stamp, as it is meant for short-term saving, to help people with budgeting.
It is said that the national savings movement has been divided on the need for the stamp. Those parts of the movement which use the stamp arc convinced that it is vitally needed. In schools, for instance, the alternative would be school banks, which are not particularly feasible for young children but it is essential that they should be able to form the savings habit right from the start. Even in industry the stamp is widely used and its abolition would reduce saving among people employed in industry.
A recommendation of the NSC in 1973 was that stamps should be retained but reviewed in two years' time. The National Savings Committee is unanimous in recommending retention of the stamp. I believe that if the stamp goes the national savings movement will collapse, and the Government and their officials would be responsible for this. It is no use praying in aid the situation in other countries because no other country has a voluntary movement.
If the stamp were abolished, what would be the alternative? People would have to use the National Savings Bank or the Trustee Savings Bank. I wonder whether the Paymaster-General or any of his officials have gone to a post office or trustee savings bank to deposit savings. It is not possible to go to a TSB on a Saturday, and if some unions get their way post office counters will also be closed on Saturdays.
In many cases if the stamp were abolished there would be no alternative for people, such as in those areas where collections of savings are made week after week. It seems that no proper thought is being given to this desperately important matter.
Let me quote to the House the words of Sir Robert Bellinger, who must be a reasonable man or he would not have been appointed Chairman of the National Savings Committee. He is reported in the Sunday Telegraph of 27th October as saying:
I am disappointed. While we are waiting for the Budget and the Prime Minister is calling for national unity in time of crisis, it is unfortunate that this should be announced at this time. The 10p stamp is the greatest rise of savings activity in this country.
I believe that the Government have gone into this matter on bad advice. I hope that they will be big enough to recognise that they have made a mistake. They cannot afford to throw aside the 50 years or so of hard work that has gone into this movement. There is a wealth of talent that is about to be lost. There is a desperate need to encourage thrift.
One of the practices we are losing is the habit of saving. This has not been helped by the recent disappearance from most post offices of the national savings stamp caused by the Stationery Office strike. As a result, there have been resignations from the savings movement.
I was grateful to the Paymaster-General for his Written Answer to me on this topic on 6th November. He said:
Provided that the present output of national savings stamps is maintained, supplies should be available at all post offices by the end of November."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November 1974; Vol. 880, c. 159.]
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing the record to be set right and for encouraging people to believe that they can go back to the post office and obtain


these stamps. It seems foolish that the movement, which exists only to try to encourage the savings habit, should suddenly be told, virtually at no notice, that it has two years to try to find another form of activity. I do not believe that it will be possible for this to be done.
I have certain links with the savings movement having run a group, having for some years been on the board of the largest trustee savings bank, and having also been a member of the Parliamentary Committee. Therefore, I know the desperate importance of trying to encourage people to start on the road to thrift. Nobody has ever said that the savings stamp by itself is the right form of saving, but it must be looked at as a lead-in. An alternative does not exist.
If the Paymaster-General wants to do something constructive—and I am sure he does—he must impress on his colleagues in the Department of Trade that the National Savings Bank should take 10p deposits rather than a 25p minimum. That would be some recognition of a desire to help the small saver. At the moment I see no evidence that anybody will take this attitude. I am distinctly worried about the situation. There is a vital need to encourage voluntary effort.
There are so many people who are anxious about this matter that it should be said that if the Minister is unable to give a helpful answer tonight—and I warn him that this is only battle No. 1—he will find himself defending the Government's action during Consolidation Fund debates, and during debates at Christmas and other Adjournment debates. Life will be easier for him if he is realistic now and accepts, with his usual smile and courtesy, that perhaps there has been a mistake and that the stamp should not be phased out.
If the right hon. Gentleman does not make a gesture of that kind, he will find that the names on the early-day motion—an all-party motion—will grow in number. I have not yet even tried to persuade people to sign it, and I believe that the numbers will be embarrassingly large for the right hon. Gentleman. The matter will be brought up on business questions on a Thursday and the Leader of the House will no doubt say that time may not be found "next week". But the Paymaster-General knows that when there

is a motion containing 100 or so signatures, the right hon. Gentleman the Patronage Secretary gets a little worried and starts to say "Will you not be a little more helpful?"—and all the minions in the Treasury will not overcome the Patronage Secretary when he is in that mood.
Knowing the Paymaster-General, I cannot believe that he will remain adamant. I urge him to have a second thought on the subject and, when he has had it, to have a third one. If he really has at heart the interests of the economy and those of small people and he wants to encourage the habit of thrift, which is to be treasured in this country, he is going about it in the wrong way. I hope that he will change his mind.

10.25 p.m.

The Paymaster-General (Mr. Edmund Dell): I am sure that the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) wishes this debate to be conducted on the merits of the question rather than in terms of the opportunities which hon. Members have to exercise pressure on the Government. We are all aware of those opportunities but let us tonight at any rate discuss the merits of the question with which we are dealing.
The hon. Gentleman has no justification for suggesting that the Government are not interested in small savers. He will know from what the Government have done in respect of the future of the trustee savings banks and in introducing index-linked bonds for small savers that we have given specific evidence of our interest in small savers—evidence which his right hon. and hon. Friends did not give in the 12 months that they had the Page Report in their hands.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that at the Glasgow assembly I made this announcement, and he quoted from the speech that I made there. I made the announcement at the Glasgow assembly of the Scottish movement because I had been told that that movement found itself especially dependent on the stamp. Let me say here and now, having listened to the debate which followed my announcement, how encouraged I was at the response the announcement had at the Glasgow assembly. The debate was extremely


constructive. Again and again speakers said "Very well. Here is a decision. We may not like it, but that is what has been decided. What we will now do is exploit the new opportunities for saving opening up in its place." No one said what the hon. Gentleman said tonight, that the end of the stamp was the end of the movement. I am sure that everyone there would have denied it emphatically if that had been suggested.
The decision has its origin in the report of the Page Committee, which made a recommendation. I should like to go through the reasons given by the Page Committee for its recommendation and to make some comment about them.
The Page Committee's first reason was that the stamp was irrelevant to State finance. I do not see that anyone can deny that. There is no question about it. The hon. Gentleman said that it was a lead-in to saving. That was the original intention in introducing the stamp. But there is little evidence that it is a lead-in to saving. The figures last year were £119 million in respect of purchases and £115 million in respect to sales. That is not a lead-in to saving, and it seems a little out of date to imagine that in this day and age thrift will be encouraged by exchanging a 10p coin for a 10p stamp which does not carry any interest.
If we want to encourage thrift among young people, which is an important objective, the sensible course of action is to introduce, as is increasingly being done, banking schemes of one kind or another.
The Page Committee's second reason was the high administrative costs. The hon. Member for Hampstead said that in calculating the cost of the stamp we should consider the fact that the Government paid no interest on it. I take no pride in the fact that this is a form of saving on which the Government pay no interest. Nevertheless the cost is high. But this is not an overwhelmingly important question. Given the scale of Government expenditure, it is not the most important reason why the decision was taken. But this is a high-cost activity. I gave the figures of purchases and sales. They mean a net gain of about £4 million. The

administrative cost during the same period was £9 million. If we take into consideration the 7 per cent. of the sales that are converted into more permanent securities, we have £12 million worth of permanent savings which cost £9 million to achieve. That is a high administrative cost.
The Page Report described the stamp not as a savings medium but as a short-term budgetary device. That, indeed, is what it is. A number of people, particularly the elderly, still buy stamps and use them for various payments, especially for television licences. I suggest that savings banks are better and safer. The hon. Gentleman tells me that he is on the board of a trustee savings bank. I would have thought that it was much better to encourage people to put their savings in banks. As the hon. Gentleman has said, the National Savings Bank will take small sums. That is a very much better and safer way of saving.
We acknowledge that there are people who buy stamps and use them for various payments such as TV licences. That is why we are introducing a television scheme. We shall not phase out the national savings stamp until the TV scheme is introduced.
Education is one of the most important aspects of the national savings movement, and one which we hope will be developed in the future even more than in the past. I cannot imagine how anyone can advocate the savings stamp as the best way of teaching people how to save. School banking schemes are being developed in more and more schools. That is the way to teach modern money management.
I hope that as a result of the announcement that I have made the change-over, which I believe has not been happening rapidly enough, will move ahead very fast. I think I can say with some security that many educationists within the national savings movement are glad that the savings stamp is being phased out so as to encourage movement in another direction.
Another point which the Page Committee made was the high security risk of the stamp. It can be lost, damaged, burned or stolen. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has seen tonight's


Evening News. Coincidentally for his Adjournment debate it carries the headline:
Thieves snatch cripple's £160 savings.
Where were those savings? They were in stamps. There was £160 worth of savings in stamps. They were stolen and they did not carry any interest. Those savings would have been very much securer in the National Savings Bank. They would have been totally secure there even if the book had been stolen.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I have not seen the headline to which the Minister refers, but how could a cripple get to the National Savings Bank to deposit his money?

Mr. Dell: The cripple's wife could get to the bank to deposit the money. How would a cripple cash an amount of that kind without going to the post office or getting somebody to do it for him? The headline to which I have referred gives an example of the sort of insecurity which sales of the stamp to old people involve.
I know a lot of people are afraid that because the stamp is being phased out the stamps that they have in their possession may not be redeemed after a certain date. That is not so. The Government undertake that the stamps will be redeemed indefinitely. The outstanding stamps are about £50 million. On that amount we pay no interest. That is not a point on which I take any pride. I do not regard it as advantageous to the Government that such a situation does not give rise to any cost to the Government. Of course, no one knows how much of the £50 million actually exists. No one knows how much of it has been lost, or how much of it would be redeemed if people wished to redeem it. There is £50 million on which the Government pay no interest. We are criticised enough for the fact that there is £6 million worth of very old certificates at low rates of interest still outstanding.
In short, the stamp is wrong for the saver. Other schemes can take over, such as schemes based on the National Savings Bank or the Trustee Savings Banks. This was very well illustrated by a number of speeches at the Glasgow assembly.
The reason for a period for phasing out is precisely to give the movement in

England and Wales and Scotland an opportunity, in consultation with the Government, to find the best ways of replacing the rôle which the stamp now fills. I want to make it clear that the national savings movement is by no means unanimous in the view that the stamp should be retained. There was a working party of regional chairmen of the movement in England and Wales, chaired by Mr. John Anstey, which reported in September 1973 to the National Savings Committee. It said about the stamp:
Having paid due regard to all the factors involved we are of the opinion that to meet the conditions of the 1970s stamp instalment saving should no longer have a place in National Savings and we, therefore, Recommend that:

i. the National savings stamp shall be withdrawn after a period of at least two years' notice;
ii. during that period, as a matter of high priority, the Voluntary movement shall seek alternative schemes for the small saver which would progressively replace the Stamp".


In other words, in the view of this distinguished group of members of the national savings movement there are alternative schemes available to replace the stamp.
It continued:

"iii. no new schemes using the National Savings Stamp shall be set up in any section of the Movement;
iv. there is a strong case for the Post Office to be requested to introduce its own special stamp for instalment saving for a Television licence."

We are also doing that.
That recommendation was rejected by the full committee of the Natioal Savings Committee. It let the Treasury know why. It rejected it because it said that it would be divisive and injurious to the voluntary movement at a time when it was facing uncertainty and criticism. It is now not facing uncertainty, because the Government have made it clear that they wish the movement to continue and will enter into discussion with the movement as to the best ways in which it can do so. The committee continued:
The committee does not regard its future as dependent upon the Stamp"—
which, again, is directly contrary to the views of the hon. Gentleman, who


appears to think that the movement will collapse without the stamps—
but agrees that steps must be taken forthwith to reduce its dependence upon this facility. Accordingly it is proposed in respect of Education and Industry that no new Stamp Group be established and for the next two years priority be given to transferring Stamp Schemes into bank and other schemes.
That is the view the National Savings Committee held in September 1973, at a time which it says was one of uncertainty. Uncertainty is ended now. The committee can go ahead and develop the many alternative routes for increasing saving.
Hon. Members have also received a circular from the committee in which it refers to the decision I announced. It said:
The National Savings Committee for England and Wales, whilst deeply regretting the decision"—
I did not know the committee had yet declared itself in that sense—
will now intensify its efforts to encourage the public to utilise other National Savings facilities.
That is the right attitude.
.
Here we come to the question the hon. Gentleman raised about the future of the movement and whether it would collapse.
I think that the movement is in more danger if it follows the hon. Gentleman's lead and spends the next two years or more fighting the decision. If the movement wishes to prove that the Page Committee was wrong—as I believe it was, because I believe that it has a future in the education and industrial sectors in particular—it must accept this decision and work from it to develop the many opportunities available to it to encourage savings. In that way it can make a valuable contribution to the encouragement of savings among young people and in industry. That is the way to justify the Government's decision not to abolish the movement. But if the movement follows the hon. Gentleman's course it will be ill-advised.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: No one is following my course. I am speaking for 190,000 people who asked me to raise the subject. That is very different from following my course.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty minutes to Eleven o'clock.